PLEASE NOTE: This e-teaching is not appropriate for children, preadolescents, and many adolescents.

Now there came to Him some of the Sadducees (who say that there is no resurrection), and they questioned Him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife, and he is childless, his brother should marry the wife and raise up children to his brother. Now there were seven brothers; and the first took a wife and died childless; and the second and the third married her; and in the same way all seven died, leaving no children. Finally the woman died also. In the resurrection therefore, which one’s wife will she be? For all seven had married her.”

Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; for they cannot even die anymore, because they are like angels, and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection” (Luke 20:27-36).

Strangely, although the Jewish sect of the Sadducees in Jesus’ day did respect the Law of Moses, they didn’t believe there was an afterlife or that anyone would be resurrected. In their thinking, death was the absolute end (which is why some say they were “sad you see”).

One of their proof texts was the Mosaic Law’s regulation concerning levirate marriage, something we’ve considered in an earlier chapter. How could there be an afterlife if one woman had been repeatedly married, widowed, and remarried? In heaven, she would be married to multiple living men! Since polyandry was unthinkable, in their minds that ruled out any possibility of an afterlife. (They would, no doubt, have been OK with Solomon having 700 wives and 300 concubines forever.)

The Sadducees, however, were clinging to a few flawed assumptions. They reasoned that if there was an afterlife, those who were married prior to their deaths would still be married. Surely, they assumed, no married woman would be another man’s wife in the afterlife. Jesus revealed, however, that there will be no marriage at all in the next life. Death ends the marriage covenant, which is why Christian marriage vows generally include the words, “till death do us part.”

For those of us who are happily married, being unmarried in heaven is a sad thought. For that reason, my wife and I have already agreed to be best friends forever. Still, we wonder how heaven could be heavenly without our marriage. We can only assume that heaven holds something even better, although unimaginable. Might perfect love make possible perfect relationships with all the saints, so that we will all, in a sense, be “married”?

The Slow Down of Sex

Regarding sex, heaven is the end of that as well. Because there will be no marriage, we can safely assume there will be no sex or desire for it. Heaven is not going to be a place of sexually frustrated people.

It is also safe to assume that our disembodied spirits and resurrected bodies will be sexless, without genitalia or sexual hormones. Hard to imagine, I know.

Those of us who are in our senior years are perhaps better able to imagine sexlessness, as sexual desire does tend to diminish with age. A 2018 survey by the University of Michigan revealed what most people assume, that sexual activity declines with age. That doesn’t mean, however, that sex ends at 60. Forty-six percent of 65- to 70-year-olds reported being sexually active. And older seniors are also showing some stamina. Thirty-nine percent of 71- to 75-year-olds and 25 percent of 76- to 80-year-olds are still sexually active.

There were, of course, plenty of variables among the survey respondents, including marital status, overall marital satisfaction among the married, health and medication status and so on. I would like to believe that, if only Christian seniors were surveyed, the data would indicate more of us are still having fun, and having more of it, than unbelievers. With the Inventor of sex living in us, the love of God shed abroad in our hearts (Rom. 5:5), and decades of marital and sexual experience, it would seem Christian seniors could still be looking forward to bedtime for reasons other than sleeping. The Bible says:

The righteous man will flourish like the palm tree,
He will grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
Planted in the house of the Lord,
They will flourish in the courts of our God.
They will still yield fruit in old age;
They shall be full of sap and very green (Psalm 92:12-14).

That’s very encouraging to us older folks!

You may recall that Zacharias was “an old man,” and his wife, Elizabeth, was “advanced in years” (Luke 1:18) and obviously past menopause when she became pregnant with John the Baptist. However, unlike the pregnancy of her much younger relative, Mary, hers did not occur without the agency of a human sperm. That means John was conceived because two old folks, Zacharias and Elizabeth, had sex. So senior sex is definitely biblical!

Still, we are all aware that, beginning sometime in our 30s, “our outer man is decaying” (2 Cor. 4:16). We may be able to delay that decay, but we can’t stop it. Sexual decline is part of the package. But God is still good. He allows our eyes to see not quite as sharply as we grow older, and it smooths out our partners’ wrinkles!

What Changes

Although everyone’s libido diminishes with age, female libido tends to decrease more than male libido, which of course can exacerbate the disparity that married couples may already have been dealing with all their married lives. In such cases, husbands need to be understanding, and wives need to be accommodating. As always, love is the answer and communication is key. Couples should talk about their sex lives with each other through every stage of life and work together to diminish any disharmony that arises. Adjustments and adaptations are to be expected.

There are, of course, always exceptions to the rules. Some women report their libido actually increasing in midlife. Perhaps that is due to being liberated from contraception, fear of pregnancy, or teenagers sleeping in the next room!

But just because frequency of sex may decline, that doesn’t mean that quality of sex must also diminish. Some seniors report enjoying their best sex of their lives, and for a number of reasons.

First, after decades of making love to the same person, they know very well how to please each other. They’ve become pros with their own signature style. Earlier hesitations and inhibitions are gone, allowing for greater variety and intimacy.

Second, as their parts age, former microwave-minutemen morph into something that is more in sync with their slow-burning wives. Older men often find it easier to “last longer,” and their wives appreciate the prolonged pleasure.

Third, with more free time and less stress in general, senior sex can be slower and more savored. No more “quickies.” Seniors don’t have to worry about children overhearing or interrupting. You may have heard the old saying, “An empty nest is best for sex.” (Actually, you probably haven’t heard it, since I just made it up.)

His Performance Pride

It can be quite a concern for older men when they first notice a downtrend in penile performance. That is when getting the soldier to stand and remain at attention isn’t as easy as it used to be. As a young man, just a daydream about his wife, or a whiff of her perfume, was enough to tighten his trousers. Over time, however, physics always trumps testosterone, and “an object at rest tends to remain at rest.” Arousal requires more stimulation than it did in younger days.

Younger men, don’t be alarmed when it happens to you. Becoming an “old softy” (now you know what that phrase actually refers to) is a component of growing older. And wives, when it happens to your husband, it isn’t because you’ve aged or that he does not find you sexually appealing. He would be facing the same phenomenon even if you regained all the sexiness of your youth. You are still beautiful.

Also, be careful not to say anything that might cut his confidence even more. You certainly don’t want to joke about what is beyond his control. That could easily add to the problem. “Performance anxiety” releases stress hormones that will narrow his blood vessels, which makes an erection even more difficult to achieve.

Rather than crushing his fragile ego with a thoughtless remark like, “Ah, I see the little guy just wants to sleep tonight,” rise to the challenge and try some sure-fire extra stimulation—vocal, visual, and tactile.[1] By the time he reaches an age where penile performance is an issue, you ought to have figured out what best arouses his attention. (If he’s really blessed, he’ll die during an orgasm, but only you will know the truth behind the words inscribed on his tombstone: “He died a happy man!”)

Her Changes

For women, the most dramatic sexual change after puberty is menopause, characterized by the cessation of her monthly menstrual cycle. Menopause affects woman differently, but for all of them, from that point on, sex has no correlation with child conception. It becomes all about intimacy and pleasure. And so it should, for both wives and their husbands. He may never say it, but from his perspective, her menopause may well be five days each month that are no longer “forbidden.”

Just as his parts likely won’t be working as well, the same is true for hers. Sex may require some additional lubrication and tenderness on his part.

As I already mentioned, her libido will likely decline even more than his. Clearly, the God who seems to have designed marriage—at least in part—to help humans learn something about unselfishness and self-denial, saves some of the most challenging lessons for our golden years. When libido disparity widens, only love can close the gap. She, by making sure he knows he is just as desirable as always, and him by pouring on the romance and thoughtfulness, as well as by understanding that some changes are beyond her control.

Husbands, at this stage of her life, more than ever, she also needs to be convinced that she is still the sexual magnet that attracts you like metal. Hopefully you delivered her long ago from the Miss Universe Contest, but culture’s infatuation with youthful female beauty is particularly hard for women as they grow older. You, more than anyone, can guard her heart from every doubt that would rob her of believing that she’s still the woman of your dreams. One of my favorite love songs, I Will be Here, composed and sung by Steven Curtis Chapman, captures these sentiments so perfectly as a godly groom promises his bride:

As sure as seasons are made for change,
Our lifetimes are made for years
So, I…I will be here
I will be here
And you can cry on my shoulder,
When the mirror tells us we’re older,
I will hold you
And I will be here
To watch you grow in beauty
And tell you all the things you are to me
I will be here

I love the line, “I will be here to watch you grow in beauty.” Even apart from Chapmen’s  masterful melody, those words are music to any woman’s ears.

You may find it hard to believe, but I tried my hand some years ago at composing some songs, including several in modern music’s most honest genre, country. One of them, titled “Growin’ Old Ain’t So Bad After All,” rose to #1 on the Never Made It chart. The lyrics, hidden in obscurity for decades until now, are an attempt to paint a positive perspective[2] on a phase of life that, from a youthful prospect, often invokes misapprehensions:

When I was young I was afraid
Of the time my hair would gray
I dreaded the day, a balding man I’d be
Now what is left is mostly grey
And what is not needs a toupee
But it’s not as bad as I’d foreseen
‘Cause I’ve gained some wisdom through the years
And now I’m less concerned with mirrors
Young pups might be real cute
But old dogs don’t give a hoot
Growin’ old ain’t so bad after all

There was a girl who stole my heart
We promised that we’d never part
Only death would quench our fire
But even then I was afraid
That those solemn vows we made
Might die like embers of our desire
But we found a love that never dies
It’s in our hearts, not just our eyes
Our love is more than kissin’
Newlyweds don’t know what they’re missin’
Growin’ old ain’t so bad after all

I used to work so hard so I could have it all
I traded priceless things for plastic toys
But the years have been a school
They have taught this hurried fool
To stop and skip some stones across the water

On supermarket magazines
We see people of our dreams
Every face seems young and beautiful
And while we wait in checkout lines
Doubts assail our older minds
Perhaps we’re not as valuable
But if that’s true please tell me why
The price of antiques is so high
The leaves of Spring and Summer are most beautiful in the Fall
Growin’ old ain’t so bad after all

Had I written those lyrics from an eternal perspective, I would have made reference to the future, glorified, immortal bodies that await all of Jesus’ people.

Regardless, when you follow Christ, every phase of life is special, including the one that brings us closer to heaven. Those golden years, especially when enjoyed with a lifelong lover, are incomparable. With a decades-old foundation of proven faithfulness, memorable shared experiences (sexual and otherwise), and hopefully a spiritual legacy, the senior years are like the capstone of a marital pyramid. I’m enjoying them myself now with the love of my life, and I wouldn’t trade it for any other time of life. Neither would I trade her for any other woman. But I need to be careful, because if I share any more detail than that, she might not fix me my chai tomorrow morning!

[1] Beyond these, there are also drugs that treat what is inappropriately referred to as “erectile dysfunction,” (as if it were something abnormal), such as Viagra, Cialis and Levitra.

[2] I hope you noted that amazing alliteration…And there! It just happened again! That is how it often is when you are a poet and don’t even know it.

The post Senior Sex appeared first on David Servant.

PLEASE NOTE: This e-teaching is not appropriate for children, preadolescents, and many adolescents.

“Ah, you are looking so nice and fat!”

Those words would hardly be perceived as a compliment in the United States, where many of us are overweight. Yet there are many countries where those sentiments are sometimes spoken as a sincere compliment. I’ve been to some of them. Without exception, those nations are generally poor, and being overweight is a sign of wealth, because it indicates that one can afford more food than most people. In many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, when someone tells you that you are fat, he is being kind.

No country better exemplifies that cultural phenomenon than Mauritania, in northwest Africa. Mauritania is mostly desert, and food is often in short supply. In rural Mauritania, people only survive if they live near an oasis. You can understand why being overweight is desirable—and even prestigious. So much so that Mauritanian men prefer heavy women. A heavy wife is the sign of a rich man. Skinniness is associated with poverty.

For that reason, Mauritanian parents often encourage their eligible daughters to put on weight.[1] They may even send them to rural “fat farms” where they are forced to consume up to 16,000 calories per day of fats and cream. That is four times the amount of daily calories consumed by adult male bodybuilders. Tragically, even drugs and hormone supplements are sometimes used to fatten young girls to make them more “attractive.”

It could be argued that rural Mauritania’s cultural fixation with female obesity is analogous to Western culture’s obsession with skinniness. Are not both extremes nothing more than cultural constructs? Did not God create our bodies with the capacity to store fat as a means of preserving essential nutrients to keep us alive during droughts and famines?

Although those opposite obsessions may both contain elements of being culturally created, I would maintain that Mauritania’s fixation with female obesity is very close to a complete cultural construct,[2] whereas Western culture’s appreciation of fitness and trimness is much closer to what is natural and what God intended for human beings. (In fact, the younger generations of Mauritanian males now view fattening negatively.) Obesity is physically unhealthy and historically unusual. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, being even a little overweight increases one’s risk for many serious diseases. Unless you need to prepare for a famine or you live north of the Artic Circle, there is no good reason to be carrying much extra body fat.

Moreover, even if Western culture’s association of attractiveness with being trim and fit is a cultural invention, good luck trying to dislodge fortress-strength cultural beliefs. No finger-wagging uber-feminist is going to change the minds of millions of men regarding what makes female forms most attractive, especially when most of those men are convinced their preferences are innate. You’d have more success trying to convince Chinese people to stop eating rice. By the way, it isn’t just men who prefer slender female forms. Studies show that women prefer in men a relatively narrow waist, and a V-shaped torso. What’s good for the goose is also good for the gander!

Dear married female readers, as I advised in the previous chapter, if you wonder how your husband feels about this, ask him. He’ll be thrilled that you care, and he’ll be even more thrilled if you care enough to try to conform to his wishes. You’ll be speaking his “love language.” If your husband is deathly afraid to broach the subject, that is not a sign of a healthy marriage. Imagine if you were deathly afraid to talk to him about his lack of affection. That, too, would not be a sign of a healthy marriage.

Oh, and when you ask him about his preferences regarding yourself, don’t hesitate to gently tell him how you feel about that V that is looking more like a U! As I told him in the previous chapter, Jabba the Hutt has no right to complain when Princess Leia puts on a few pounds.

“But taking off weight is so difficult!” you are likely thinking. “What I do lose, I always gain back!”

Well, I’ve certainly got some good news for men and women who want to lose pounds and keep them off. I’m going to tell you a simple secret to getting slender and staying slender. But first, I’d like to provide you with a little more motivation to be slender. Where there is a will, there is a way.

Taking Care of the Temple

If you’ve been around Christian circles for any significant length of time, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “Take care of your temple.” Perhaps you’ve heard it used in a sermon or Christian magazine article that touched on the importance of physical exercise for maintaining health, or from the lips of a friend who declined a sugar-rich dessert.

The underlying idea behind the phrase is certainly biblical. The bodies of Christians are “temples of the Holy Spirit”:

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God…? (1 Cor. 6:19).

That is no insignificant thing. Think about it: If you believe in Jesus, God lives in you by His Holy Spirit.

So what does that have to do with sex?

Interestingly, Paul’s words to the Corinthians regarding Christian bodies being temples of the Holy Spirit are found contextually within in a passage in which he was warning Christian men against having sex with prostitutes (see 1 Cor. 6:15-20). Corinth was famous in the ancient world as a city where numerous pagan temples employed prostitutes to service the idol-worshippers who frequented them. Paul warned that a Christian man who became “one flesh” with one of those women was joining a temple that was owned and inhabited by God to a prostitute. So being a temple of God has sexual ramifications.

Think about it: God not only (1) invented sex and (2) knows and sees everything we do sexually, but He’s also (3) with us when we engage in sex. All of that would seem to make sex sacred, particularly for believers.

Once again we see that sex is not an unspiritual topic. On the contrary. And neither is “taking care of the temple” an unspiritual idea. We should take care of the place where God lives. Think about all the human effort that was invested in constructing and maintaining the old covenant tabernacle and temples, and how sacred those places were that housed God’s presence. In that light, a good question to ask ourselves is: Does how I care for my body reflect a genuine belief that it is God’s temple? Think about how profound of a question that is.

But why have I titled this chapter, “Your Sexy Temple”?

First, because your body, a temple of the Holy Spirit, is male or female. It has genitals. So you have either a female or male temple. God is not embarrassed about that. He lives there.

Second, as I shared in the previous chapter, God invented female physical beauty as well as male attraction to female physical beauty. Similarly, He invented male physical handsomeness as well as female attraction to male handsomeness.[3]

Keeping those two things in mind, if we use the dictionary’s definition for “sexy,” which is “sexually attractive or exciting,” then it is safe to say that God gave you a sexy temple. Right? He gave you a body that is attractive to the opposite sex.

Of course, although God has given you a body that is attractive to the opposite sex, He wants you to reserve it, sexually, for one person, namely, your spouse. So it could be said this way: God gave you a sexy temple to which He’s given your spouse exclusive sexual rights. Or, it could be said this way: Your sexy temple is a gift from God and from yourself for your covenant marriage partner.

This is contained in Scripture. Again, we turn to Paul’s words that we’ve previously read:

Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband. The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control (1 Cor. 7:1-5, emphasis added).

The primary subject of that passage is sexual deprivation in marriage, something concerning which the Corinthians had written to Paul. Using very strong terms, Paul explained why marital sexual deprivation is wrong. It is because God has given married couples “authority” over each other’s bodies. Again, your sexy temple is a gift from God and from yourself for your covenant marriage partner.

What Paul Did Not Mean

Sadly, the above passage has been abused by some who claim it gives no married person the right, on any occasion, for any reason, to ever deny their spouse sex, in any form. But that certainly was not Paul’s intent. Rather, he was addressing total sexual deprivation. A wife who gently explains to her husband why she would prefer to wait until tomorrow night is not totally depriving him of sex. To delay is not to deny.

That being said, couples who love each other desire to please each other sexually, which of course could mean some sacrifice and “dying to self.” Loving couples don’t want to sexually deprive their spouses to any degree, so any sexual disharmony—which is inevitable—is worked out via loving communication and compromise.

For example, a common point of sexual contention is that of lovemaking frequency. Men, in general, are notorious for desiring more frequent sex than their wives. So let’s imagine a husband who desires sex three times per week, while his wife is quite happy with once per week. What should they do? I would suggest a compromise of three times a week. (Being a man, it is difficult for me not to be on his side on this!)

More seriously, they could compromise at twice a week. He might find that the extra buildup of desire that is created by a longer period of abstinence increases the quality of their lovemaking. And surely she could make a sacrifice and endure double the love!

On the other hand, he may find himself frustrated or worse, more easily tempted to masturbate or look at porn. Female readers may be rolling their eyeballs, but they should keep in mind that a man’s basic sexual drive is not something he can just turn off and on. It is driven by testosterone, and it continually increases as semen is relentlessly manufactured by, and stored in, his body—until it is released. Dr. Willard Harvey writes, “A woman can witness firsthand what an intense sex drive feels like by wearing a testosterone patch for a week to raise her level of the hormone to that of the average nineteen-year-old male. It’s an eye-opening experience for women, who usually don’t want to repeat it.”[4]

A loving wife would certainly not want her husband, to whom she makes love once a week, to also find sexual release through masturbation or even involuntary nocturnal emissions.

So, in all seriousness, the best compromise—in light of male biology—is for a wife to do her best to lovingly accommodate her husband’s God-given biological schedule, either through mutual all-out lovemaking or something that provides him some satisfaction. At the same time, a husband should be striving to master the art of romance, affection and lovemaking in order to increase his wife’s desire for, and enjoyment of, their sexual relationship. His goal is to grow her desire to match his.

Should You Trust the Sexperts?

Husbands not only often wish for greater frequency of sex, but also for higher quality of sex, and in that respect they are no different than their wives. Who wants just rice and beans when you could be enjoying the whole enchilada?

This fits within the theme of sexual deprivation. Loving couples don’t want to deprive their lovers of the highest possible quality of sex. Marital sex was obviously not designed by God to be mastered in three sessions. Rather, He designed it to be a journey that takes a lifetime. It begins with two amateurs who gradually, through life’s seasons, become masters as they employ love, patience, communication and experimentation, which all lead to discovery.

Notice that I didn’t include in that list “internet research regarding sexual techniques.” If you are a Christian, you have the Inventor of sex living inside you, and He’s with you when you make love to your spouse. It is possible that He could and would guide you in your sex life? Could “being led by the Spirit” enhance your love life? Why not?

The trouble with learning sexual techniques from human “experts” is that their spirits, souls and bodies might well be somewhat different than yours and your spouse’s. Beyond that, they might be in a different season of life, or be years ahead in the learning curve, or have a background soiled by porn. They may not even be honest, setting you up for false expectations. Beyond all of that, they might enjoy something you may not.

You are you. Your spouse is your spouse. Your marriage is your marriage. Besides a few things that all males sexually hold in common and all females sexually hold in common, there is a lot of variation within the genders. And people change as they grow older. Some folks change between lovemaking sessions! All that being so, reading the advice of “experts” can be somewhat like reading a guidebook to the Grand Canyon to prepare yourself for a visit to Niagara Falls. Why not let the Inventor of sex be your guide? He knows more than anyone. And who wouldn’t want to hear their spouse say, “I think the Lord revealed to me during prayer something I could do to make you really happy!”?

This is not to say there is no benefit in gaining some sexual education from trusted sources. I certainly have, and I’ll include a list of recommended books and websites at the end of this book. It is to say, however, that when God created Adam and Eve, they only had their God-given instincts, His periodic visits to the Garden, and a lot of time. If you are just starting out in marriage, don’t try to rush the fun-filled journey.

What is a Caretaker to do?

Now, let’s return to thinking about your sexy temple, that beautiful, sexually-attractive body God has given to you. Remember, it is not your body. It belongs to God:

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? (1 Cor. 6:19).

Secondly, at least sexually, your body belongs to your spouse. As we’ve previously read:

The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does (1 Cor.7:4).

So, your sexy temple is God’s gift to your spouse. You are the “middleman” (or the middle woman), and the caretaker.

All of that being so, if God has entrusted someone with a sexually-attractive body for their spouse (and He has, in every marriage relationship), should that person cooperate with God or work against Him? I think the answer is obvious.

When you look at it that way, “taking care of the temple” becomes an act of love expressed towards God, who created, owns, and resides in the temple, and towards your spouse, who has God-given exclusive sexual rights to the temple. And since both female and male physical attractiveness are a combination of divine and human effort, what could be wrong with making efforts to maintain and enhance, within reason, one’s physical attractiveness for one’s spouse? Nothing. In fact, everything would be right about it. It is an act of love.

I recently read of a study that found that couples in their sixties who were still having regular sex looked between five and seven years younger than those no longer having sex. Those who performed the study credited the more youthful appearance of the sexually-active seniors to the fact that sex boosts the levels of an anti-ageing hormone called DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone). After orgasm, they noted, levels of DHEA in the blood rise to five times the normal level. (Husbands, if you do some math, you can then explain to your wife a way you can both make yourselves look 20 years younger, plus live to be 130…)

I wondered, however, if those scientists inadvertently reversed the cause and effect. Could it be that seniors who took care of their sexy temples, defying normal aging to some degree, were more sexually attractive to their spouses, and so they consequently desired and engaged in sex, while those who neglected their sexy temples consequently experienced diminished desire and sex? Food for thought! Regardless, there are plenty of benefits to taking care of your sexy temple, doing what you can to maintain its God-given sexiness for as long as possible. One of those benefits is better health. Another is increased quality of sex, as any visually-oriented male will tell you.

A Fast Way to Lose Weight

I promised you earlier that I would tell you a simple secret to getting slender and staying slender. So allow me to now keep my promise.

Most everyone knows that the only way to lose weight is to eat less, exercise more, or both. Pretty simple. Every weight loss plan that has ever existed is some variation of those components. Some weight loss plans are more sophisticated than others because they focus on reducing or eliminating certain kinds of the most-fattening foods, or they focus on specific kinds of exercise. But in the end, apart from fat-removal surgery, to lose weight you must consume fewer calories, burn more calories, or achieve a combination of the two.

The trouble is, too many of us have been doing the exact opposite of that. We’ve been eating more food than our bodies need for daily energy requirements, so our bodies store some of the excess food as body fat. That is how God designed human bodies. Like every other bodily process, it is miraculous.

Many folks, however, have never thought about God’s reason for that particular process. He designed our bodies to store fat so nutrients can be accessed later—when there is not enough food, or no food, available for our daily energy requirements. Ideally, fat storage was intended to be temporary, or seasonal, rather than permanent.

A shortage of food is not something with which most readers are probably familiar. But I know subsistence farmers in poor regions of Africa who have, all their lives, endured an annual “hunger season.” That is what they call it. It is when they’ve consumed all of last year’s harvest and must wait for this year’s harvest in order to have something to eat.

The ministry I founded two decades ago, Heaven’s Family, is working in a number of African nations to, among many other things, eliminate the annual hunger season through agricultural education and training. Through a program called Farming God’s Way, we’ve helped thousands of poor, subsistence farmers exponentially increase their annual harvests so that they no longer suffer through an annual hunger season, and they actually have cash crops to sell.

It is difficult for most of us to imagine going without any food for weeks at a time, but our bodies are designed to survive such an ordeal if need be. Historically, many members of the human race have experienced weeks without food, and they survived as long as they started with some extra fat on their bodies. Some have survived months without food. (Keep in mind I’m speaking of food, but not about water.)

You probably think I’m going to tell you to quit eating for a few months! No, but I am going to encourage you to fast periodically for a day. It is, in my opinion, the easiest way to lose weight. Beyond that, it is something every Christian is supposed to be doing on some regular basis. Remember Jesus said to His followers:

Whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance so that they will be noticed by men when they are fasting (Matt. 6:16).

Notice Jesus did not say, “If you fast.” He said, “Whenever you fast.” Those words are contained in His Sermon on the Mount, a sermon most Christians consider relevant.[5]

John Wesley and the early Methodists fasted two days each week, based on the fact that Jesus warned His followers that they would not enter the kingdom of heaven unless their righteousness surpassed that of the Pharisees (see Matt. 5:20), coupled with the fact that there is biblical evidence that the Pharisees fasted twice a week (see Luke 18:12).

Personally, I’m not persuaded that the Pharisees fasted two entire days each week. I would not be surprised if they simply didn’t eat between dinner and breakfast twice a week and called it fasting. Neither am I persuaded that we have to fast twice a week in order to go to heaven. I am persuaded, however, that fasting should be a component of every Christian’s life. Some of the benefits include gaining more time to pray, learning self-control, as well as achieving weight-control, so your sexy temple will become even sexier! Beyond that, there are many health benefits to fasting.

How to Start

If you’ve never fasted, I would encourage you to learn all you can about it from a medical and scientific perspective. There are many good books[6] and plenty of information available on the internet, as well as fasting apps you can download to your phone.

At the same time, I would encourage you to try it. Go for an entire day without eating anything. You’ll be fasting from after dinner on one day until breakfast two days later, or about 36 hours. You could fast for a shorter period of time, but many first-time fasters who only skip breakfast, for example, end up eating twice as much as normal for lunch. So they actually don’t skip a meal, but rather just delay it. That won’t result in any weight loss.

If it is your first time fasting, it probably won’t be fun, but you won’t die! You will at minimum experience some hunger pangs or food cravings. There could be other unpleasant feelings, like a headache for example, particularly if you are a coffee-drinker. Think of yourself as an addict going through withdrawal, because you are! You are addicted to caffeine. There could well be other forms of detox that your body initiates when you fast. It’s all good.

Let me tell you some encouraging news. If you will commit to fasting one day per week, every fast will become progressively easier. Eventually it will be very easy. I know, because I regularly fast. I can easily fast for 36 hours and continue my regular routine during the fast, even if it includes physical labor. At worst, I might experience five minutes of slight mid-morning hunger. That’s it. My body has learned how to easily switch from getting energy from just-consumed food to getting it from stored fat. And in one day, I’ve burned about 2,000 to 2,500 calories, which means I’ve lost a little more than half of a pound of body fat. By fasting two full days out of every seven, most people will lose at least one pound a week (as long as they don’t eat more than normal on non-fasting days). Do that for a year and you’ll take off 52 pounds.

Of course, there are many other methods for losing weight, and if fasting isn’t your thing, choose another option. Generally speaking, to lose one pound of body fat, you need to burn 3,500 more calories than you eat in a given time span. So, if you reduce your caloric intake by 500 calories a day for seven days, you’ll lose one pound, even without any additional exercise.

As an alternative, and to achieve the same result of losing a pound per week, you could burn 250 extra calories a day through exercise while also eliminating 250 calories in daily food intake. Depending on your weight, you can burn 100-200 calories with just 30 minutes of brisk walking. The heavier you are, the more calories you will burn by walking.

Although this all sounds simple, you probably realize that mustering the self-discipline to lose a pound per week is challenging for most folks. If you look at your body, however, as God’s temple, and as a sexy gift from Him and yourself to your spouse (or future spouse), that should provide lots of motivation for you to take better care of it. Add to that all the personal benefits of taking better care of your temple, such as improved health and better sex, and you should find the will to do what it takes, as so many others have. “You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you” (see Phil. 4:13), including achieving an even sexier temple!

[1] Other countries where female fattening is practiced include regions of Niger, Uganda, Sudan, Tunisia, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.

[2] It might also be helpful to remember that Mauritania stands among the countries with the highest prevalence of female genital mutilation/cutting. 69% of Mauritanian women aged 15-49 years have suffered through that culturally-constructed, degrading and often harmful ritual.

[3] The idea is biblical. Joseph was “handsome in form and appearance” (Gen. 39:6), which made him very desirable to the lustful wife of Potiphar. Scripture says concerning Saul, “There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he” (1 Sam. 9:2). David is described in the Bible as being “ruddy, with beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance” (1 Sam. 16:12). Regarding his son Absalom, Scripture says, “Now in all Israel was no one as handsome as Absalom, so highly praised; from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no defect in him” (2 Sam. 14:25).

[4] P. 51-52 of His Needs, Her Needs

[5] And so they should, as Jesus told His apostles to teach their disciples everything He had commanded them, which makes all of Jesus’ commandments relevant to every generation of His followers (see Matt. 28:19-20).

[6] See, for example, Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor’s Program for Conquering Disease, by Joel Fuhrman, M.D. Dr. Fuhrman utilizes diet and fasting programs to relieve chronic headaches, hypoglycemia, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, colitis, psoriasis, lupus and uterine fibroids. Or see The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting, by Dr. Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore.

The post Your Sexy Temple appeared first on David Servant.

PLEASE NOTE: This e-teaching is not appropriate for children, preadolescents, and many adolescents.

She was a Ukrainian beauty, no denying that. Her long, dark hair hung past her shoulders, standing in sharp contrast to all the other women in the church, who had their hair in buns or tucked up under bonnets. She sported a blouse and skirt, while they all wore long dresses. She was wearing bright red lipstick and some rouge on her cheeks; every other female face was unembellished. They knew the Bible reported that wicked queen Jezebel had once “painted her eyes” (2 Kings 9:30).

The church was on the outskirts of Keiv, Ukraine’s capital, and it was the early 1990s. Ukraine had recently been released from the iron grip of the former Soviet Union, and its formerly-persecuted churches were experiencing freedom for the first time in decades. I was with a team of American pastors who were traveling around Ukraine preaching in churches, and on one occasion, even at a regular meeting of local communist party members.

On this particular cold winter Sunday, we were visiting a Pentecostal congregation that was meeting in their middle-aged pastor’s house. It was jammed full of sincere folks who sat on backless wooden pews. Men and women were segregated into sections. The dark-haired young beauty whom I previously mentioned had innocently seated herself in one of the men’s sections, a fact to which she never became aware during the morning’s hymn singing and several sermons. I noticed a number of the younger women in a different corner of the house looking at her and laughing amongst themselves.

Near the end of the service, when the pastor extended an invitation for salvation, she walked forward. He instructed her to fall to her knees and confess her sins, which she did, out loud and with tears.

I wondered if she was a backslidden Pentecostal who was “coming back to the Lord,” or if she had no religious background and was one of the hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans whose empty hearts were being stirred spiritually after the demise of communism. And I couldn’t help but wonder what she would look like once she adopted the Pentecostal dress code and rule book, and what her friends, family and co-workers would think about it. Would it help draw them towards the gospel, or would it help drive them away from it?[1]

And this brings me to my general subject of this chapter: female beauty, and its role in male attraction and marital sex. There is certainly a spectrum of opinion within Christian circles regarding female beauty. At one end of that spectrum are those who seem to equate female holiness with unattractiveness. They sometimes point to words by Peter and Paul to support their stance:

Your adornment must not be merely[2] external—braiding the hair, and wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses; but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God (1 Pet. 3:3-4).

Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness (1 Tim. 2:9-10).

On the other end of the spectrum are those who completely ignore Peter and Paul’s words. Not only is female obsession with outward appearance and adornment OK with them, but they also see nothing wrong with women displaying their God-given beauty in such a way as to send sexual signals to every male they encounter.

As is so often the case, a balanced perspective is the biblical one. Let’s see if we can find that balance in the Bible. And just as the previous chapter was written primarily, but not exclusively, to men (hopefully eliciting some female cheers), this chapter is written primarily, but not exclusively, to women (and will likely evoke some male applause). Ladies and gentlemen, trust me—I do have both of your best interests at heart.

The Creator of Female Beauty

Hopefully we can all agree that female beauty was God’s idea originally, and so was male attraction to female beauty. As some preliminary proof, here’s a biblical passage found quite early in Genesis:

Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose…. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. (Gen. 6:1-2, 4).

Apart from raising questions regarding the identity and activity of the “sons of God,” [3] this passage unsurprisingly assigns the trait of beauty to females, beauty that attracted the sons of God so much that they desired to marry them. In that respect, most men can relate to the “sons of God,” whoever they were. Men are attracted to female beauty. It is a visual attraction, an almost universal male trait I’ve repeatedly mentioned in previous chapters.

Beyond that, the clear implication of this passage is that female beauty was evident to the “sons of God” prior to any marriage with those females, and that the fullness of female beauty was not revealed until after marriage, the anticipation of which is what created the desire among the “sons of God” to marry the “daughters of men.” To put it plainly, the “sons of God” liked what they saw, and they wanted to see it more often and more fully.

So the “daughters of men” weren’t covered head-to-toe in shapeless burqas prior to marriage, otherwise they would have possessed very little beauty, if any, that would have attracted the sons of God. Female Ugliness Advocates, please take note! Female beauty, which is God-given and designed to be visually attractive to men, requires some degree of revealing if it is to be attractive. That revealing should, of course, be modest in relationship to all men other than one’s husband, something taught in the biblical passage under consideration, as well as consistently throughout the rest of Scripture.

Incidentally, when Peter admonished women regarding their adornment not being external but internal in 1 Peter 3:3-4 (that I quoted earlier), he cited Abraham’s wife, Sarah, as one who set a good example of that practice (see 1 Pet. 3:5-6). Recall, however, Scripture states that Sarah was “very beautiful” (Gen. 12:14), and so much so that Abraham feared the Egyptians might kill him on account of her beauty. So there is the balance. Sarah, a “holy” (1 Pet. 3:5-6) woman who did not focus excessively on outward adornment, was noticeably beautiful to other men besides her husband.

Holiness and physical beauty are not mutually exclusive, as the two passages I’ve mentioned indicate. Again, female beauty is God-given, and so is male attraction to female beauty. Neither are morally wrong. In fact, both are morally good, since both come from God.[4]

Forbidden Female Beauty Enhancement?

But what about the propriety of Christian women attempting to enhance their beauty? Were Peter and Paul forbidding that?

It is worth noting that the translators of the New American Standard Bible felt justified in adding the word “merely” before Peter’s caution to women about outward adornment: Here are his words again:

Your adornment must not be merely external—braiding the hair, and wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses; but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God (1 Pet. 3:3-4).

The NASB translators were persuaded that Peter was not forbidding any and all hair braiding, jewelry and dresses. If he was, we should be telling Christian women that it is inappropriate for them to wear dresses. In fact, the Greek word translated “dresses” in 1 Peter 3:4 can be rightly translated as “clothing” or “apparel” (as it is in the King James Version). Peter certainly wasn’t  forbidding Christian women from wearing clothing! Rather, he was cautioning against an over-emphasis on outward adornment at the expense of more important “inward adornment.”

Regarding the propriety of women wearing some jewelry, not only did our Shulammite wear earrings and a necklace (Song 1:10; 4:9) and Rebeka wear a gold ring and two bracelets given to her by Abraham via his servant (Gen. 24:22, 30), but God Himself once metaphorically referred to the people of Israel as His own wife whom he lovingly adorned with fine clothing and jewelry:

“I also clothed you with embroidered cloth and put sandals of porpoise skin on your feet; and I wrapped you with fine linen and covered you with silk. I adorned you with ornaments, put bracelets on your hands and a necklace around your neck. I also put a ring in your nostril, earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your dress was of fine linen, silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour, honey and oil; so you were exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. Then your fame went forth among the nations on account of your beauty, for it was perfect because of My splendor which I bestowed on you,” declares the Lord God (Ezek. 16:10-14).

It would seem unlikely that God would use such an analogy if He considered the metaphorical actions He attributed to Himself to be sinful on some level. On the contrary, He portrayed Himself positively as a loving husband who spent his money to enhance his wife’s beauty.

So the balance on female beauty is that it is God-given, as is male attraction to female beauty. There is, therefore, nothing wrong with a woman cooperating with God to achieve her fullest beauty potential, just as long as it doesn’t supersede her quest for inner beauty, which would of course call for, among other things, modesty in regard to all men besides her husband. And in regard to her husband—who is entitled to the fulness of her beauty—her cooperation with God to achieve her fullest beauty potential is an expression of her love for him.

Some Application

Female readers, single and married, take note! Single women, there is nothing wrong with making the most of your God-given beauty—just as long as you are modest. Your God-given beauty is one of the sharper arrows in your quiver that can help you bag a good man! If you do marry someone in the future, I can assure you part of his reason will be because of your physical beauty.[5]

Married women, your husband married you, at least in part, because he was attracted to your God-given physical beauty. He expected when he married you that he would enjoy your beauty more often and more fully. So don’t deprive him (as Paul wrote), to any degree. Remember that, according to Willard Harley’s surveys, in general, men’s greatest emotional need is for sexual fulfilment and their third-greatest emotional need is for a physically-attractive spouse. Those two are so closely related it is surprising that Harley separated them. Sexual fulfillment for a standard visually-oriented male requires a physically-attractive wife. That means his first-greatest emotional need hinges on his third-greatest emotional need. That means his third-greatest emotional need is actually a component of his first-greatest emotional need.

I realize, of course, that what I’m writing could make men appear shallow, and in Western culture, as well as in some Christian circles, there are trends that condemn that perceived shallowness. Women, understandably, don’t want to be judged solely on their physical beauty, because they have hearts, minds, personalities, character, abilities, skills and much more. (Men, try to imagine how it would feel if women judged you solely on the basis of your physical appearance.) Sadly, there is too much of that kind of shallowness among men.

Still, biology is biology. And God is God. He created females with their feminine physical traits, and He put brains in human males that are programmed to be attracted, visually, to certain female physical traits, what is called “beauty.” Yes, some of the criteria of that attraction is culturally constructed (fashion styles and shaved legs for example), but most of it is innate. It is just as divine and mysterious as gravitational attraction between planets. No man can explain why he is attracted to female beauty; he only knows that he is. Who can similarly explain what makes a delicate flower, golden sunrise, or snow-covered mountain peak pleasing to human eyes? It is all divine, and it should provoke everyone to seek the God who is behind all the mystery. And those unattractive uber-feminists who are trying to convince us that female beauty is purely a cultural construct are fighting both God and biology.[6]

Similarly confused are some Christians who deprecate the concept of female beauty, claiming it is “unspiritual.” They might as well claim that God is unspiritual since female beauty was His idea. The Bible, inspired by the Holy Spirit, often mentions female beauty. We’ve already read in Genesis 6 of the general beauty shared by all females that makes them attractive. Additionally, Scripture specifically describes Rachel and Esther as being “beautiful of form and face” (Gen. 29:17; Esth. 2:7), and Sarah and Rebekah as both being “very beautiful” (Gen. 12:14. 24:6). It also mentions the physical beauty of Abigail, Bathsheba, Tamar, Abishag, Queen Vashti and Job’s daughters (1 Sam. 25:3; 2 Sam. 11:2; 13:1; 1 Kin 1:3; Esth. 1:11; Job 42:15).

Added to that list is also our Shulammite. She was obviously quite an attractive woman, at least in the eyes of Solomon, the “daughters of Jerusalem,” as well as her husband, whose elaboration of her beauty in the Song of Solomon’s fourth chapter we’ve previously considered. You may recall in that description, he started by describing her eyes and then worked downwards. Unsurprisingly, there is another elaboration of his in the Song’s seventh chapter in which he starts with her feet and works upwards! He was not the first man, nor the last, to look at a woman “up and down.” Glad she was his wife!

We might as well take a look at his second description while we’re on the subject. And I might as well inform female readers that his elaboration of her beauty has the potential to cause the hearts of imaginative male readers under the age of 85 to beat a little faster. Really. And it’s in the Bible!

The Chapter Seven Elaboration

How beautiful are your feet in sandals,
O prince’s daughter!
The curves of your hips are like jewels,
The work of the hands of an artist (Song 7:1)

Yes, female feet can be attractive to men. Who can explain it? An alternate translation to the Hebrew word translated “feet” in Song 7:1 is “footsteps.” Watching a woman walk can also be attractive to males, as can just about any female movement. It is no secret that some men join fitness clubs, not just to work out, but to watch female forms in motion.

Equally unexplainable is male fascination with female legs. Our shepherd especially appreciated the curves of his woman’s hips/thighs/buttocks, which he likened to “jewels” that were “the work of the hands of an artist.” That artist, incidentally, was God.

Your navel is like a round goblet
Which never lacks mixed wine;
Your belly is like a heap of wheat
Fenced about with lilies (Song 7:2).

This verse has certainly had its share of head-scratching male readers. What man would ever dare tell his wife that her belly reminded him of a “heap of wheat” if he didn’t want to sleep on the couch that night?

Obviously, the Shulammite’s “heap of wheat” belly was attractive to our shepherd. Were men in his day attracted to women who were “pleasingly plump”? If so, why does he soon praise her because her form is like a slender palm tree?

There are several possible explanations, and one lies with imagining a heap of wheat, not as a half-sphere protruding outward from a female abdomen (as during pregnancy), but rather as an elongated half-sphere that is comparable to her entire midriff (her front between her chest and waist). Most men would understand the shepherd’s excitement over that part of her body, and that interpretation helps explain how a “heap of wheat belly” could house a “round goblet” navel. (Belly fat tends to compress navels, so only a thin midriff creates a “round goblet” navel.)

But what on her body was akin to a bordering “fence of lilies” that surrounded the “heap of wheat”? That is more of a mystery, and perhaps the New Living Translation offers some clarification:

Your navel is perfectly formed
like a goblet filled with mixed wine.
Between your thighs lies a mound of wheat
bordered with lilies (Song 7:2).

In this translation, the “mound of wheat” is between her thighs, and around that mound there is a flowering border row. Could her lover have been speaking discreetly of her clitoris and labia[7]? It is impossible to say, but at least there is some possible explanation for the “border of lilies” around the “mound of wheat.”

Breasts are the Best

Our shepherd continues working up his wife’s beautiful body:

Your two breasts are like two fawns,
Twins of a gazelle (Song 7:3).

You probably recall we read the same words in the shepherd’s earlier description of his wife’s beauty (in the Song’s fourth chapter). The take-away from those identical admirations is that men really appreciate female breasts. In fact, our shepherd shortly will be mentioning his wife’s breasts yet a third and fourth time. (And this is why it is so difficult for men to suppress a blushing smile when asked during a chicken dinner, “Do you prefer legs or breasts?”)

Your neck is like a tower of ivory,
Your eyes like the pools in Heshbon
By the gate of Bath-rabbim;
Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon,
Which faces toward Damascus (Song 7:4).

Not knowing what the tower of Lebanon that faced Damascus actually looked like, it is difficult to understand how her nose reminded him of it. It is not so difficult, however, to appreciate her eyes being comparable to pools of water and her neck to a tower of ivory. The point is, her face and neck were attractive to her lover. Who can explain it?

Your head crowns you like Carmel,
And the flowing locks of your head are like purple threads;
The king is captivated by your tresses (Song 7:5).

This verse is sometimes presented as evidence that it is King Solomon, not the shepherd, who is admiring the Shulammite in this passage because of the phrase, “the king is captivated by your tresses.” We could certainly imagine an egotistical monarch speaking of himself in the third person. Still, it is worth noting the line does not read, “I am captivated by your tresses.” It is possible that her husband, having now secured her release from Solomon’s harem, is complimenting her by telling her that a king—who had no shortage of beautiful women surrounding him—was very attracted to her hair, as was he. The poetic Hebrew imagery likens the curls of her hair to binding chains.

There is another possible interpretation. Note that the entire verse contains regal metaphors. Her head “crowns” her. The locks of her hair are “like purple threads” (or perhaps braided with purple threads) and we know that in ancient times purple was a color reserved for royalty and the rich. Her admirer had referred to her seconds earlier as a “prince’s daughter” (Song 7:1), which certainly does not fit anything else we know about her identity. So perhaps that admirer, the shepherd, now reunited with her, was role-playing as another king who was captivated by her beauty. As if he were saying, “In case you have any regret that you turned down the chance to be a queen in Solomon’s harem, I too am a king, but I have no need for a harem with you as my princess.” How nice would that be?

How beautiful and how delightful you are,
My love, with all your charms!
Your stature is like a palm tree,
And your breasts are like its clusters.
I said, “I will climb the palm tree,
I will take hold of its fruit stalks.”
Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine,
And the fragrance of your breath like apples,
And your mouth like the best wine (Song 7:6-9a)!

Surveying her entire form, he is attracted primarily to her slenderness, which he compares to the stature of a palm tree, and her breasts, which he compares to the palm tree’s fruit, which most likely—in Israel—were dates (no, not coconuts[8]). Her allure is irresistible. He cannot just look. He must get closer. His apex sexual sense, sight, has aroused him to indulge his other senses, which he enumerates: touch, taste and smell.

Readers can’t help but wonder about the literal meaning behind our shepherd’s metaphors. Having just described her, starting with her feet and working upwards to her head, and also having compared her to a palm tree, what does he mean when he says he will “climb the palm tree”? The imagery is that of a man climbing a palm tree for the purpose of retrieving clusters of dates. Similarly, he intends to “climb” her to “reach” her breasts. What will he do on the way up? Readers can only imagine.

Clearly, when he reaches his “climbing” goal, he intends to caress her breasts with his hands (“I will take hold of its fruit stalks”), and perhaps also with his mouth (“may your breasts be like clusters of the vine”). He also is anticipating some serious kissing (“may…the fragrance of your breath [be] like apples, and your mouth [be] like the best wine”).

As an aside, in ancient times, there was no antiseptic mouthwash, so bad breath was dealt with by masking it with some aromatic substance, such as frankincense or myrrh resin, or in the case of our Shulammite and shepherd, apple slices.

But, back to our shepherd’s hope for a wine-like experience of locking lips with his lover. The Shulammite’s response plays on his metaphor:

It goes down smoothly for my beloved,
Flowing gently through the lips of those who fall asleep (Song 7:9b).

Her kisses would be smooth and gentle, and just as wine may initially have a stimulating effect but is primarily a sedative, so her kisses would ultimately sedate him, transporting him to another world. Men often fall asleep after making love due to the orgasmic release of sleep-inducing hormones in their brains. So wives, don’t be angry when your husband quickly dozes off. You are the magnificent woman who gave him that cotton-like feeling in his brain. And his arousal all started with him seeing your beauty.

But I’m Not Beautiful!

I’m sure there are a percentage of female readers who, having read this far in this chapter, are suffering sinking spirits due to being convinced that they are not in the “beautiful” category. So allow me to eradicate that falsehood. If you are female, you are beautiful. Just remember that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

Take note that half of all humans are female, and most of them end up married. Apparently, all of them were attractive to at least one male (and probably to many more), indicating that, if you are unmarried, there is a very good chance at least one man (and probably more) is going to find you attractive enough to want to marry you. Don’t let it bother you that some men aren’t attracted to you any more than you let it bother you that some insects aren’t attracted to you. (Some men, as you probably realize, are like insects…)

Yes, there are the Miss Universe contestants who generally possess traits of beauty that make them nearly universally attractive. But even the Miss Universe contest affirms the truth that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Male viewers of the television broadcast often wonder how some Miss Universe contestants were selected to represent their countries. “If she is the most beautiful woman in her country,” they think to themselves, “they must not have too much of a selection there.” But judges in those contestants’ countries would beg to differ.

Moreover, it is fairly obvious that Miss Universe contestants haven’t come by all their beauty naturally without any personal effort. They didn’t get their hourglass figures by laying on the couch all day eating potato chips and jelly beans. Thus, all of them could be less attractive if they neglected to do what they did do to make themselves more attractive. I would dare say that any Miss Universe contestant has the potential to transform herself from being nearly-universally attractive to being very limitedly attractive, or even nearly-universally unattractive. Any of them could shave their heads, stop bathing, gain 300 pounds, and allow themselves to be consumed by selfishness. Potentially, any beauty could become a beast!

That being said, if a female “beauty-to-beast” transformation is possible, so is the reverse, and from any starting point. Female beauty is obviously a combination of divine and human effort. Every woman reveals the beauty of God’s handiwork to some degree. But every woman cooperates with God to a greater or lesser degree to reveal the full potential of her beauty, and not only physical beauty, but also in her character and personality, two components of inward beauty that make women attractive to men.

Regarding those non-physical aspects of female beauty, an ugly personality or character can completely obscure a woman’s physical beauty, as noted by the Amplified Bible’s translation of Proverbs 11:22: “As a ring of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a beautiful woman who is without discretion [her lack of character mocks her beauty].” That is why even Miss Universe contestants are not judged solely by outward appearance. That is also why women who excel in character and personality seem so much more beautiful than outwardly-gorgeous witches.

The Beautiful Application

So, single women who hope to marry, don’t work against God, the one who has given you your full potential of beauty in spirit, soul and body. Work with Him. You may not achieve the nearly-universal, subjective, attractiveness of a Miss Universe contestant, but you will get much closer to it than women who don’t cooperate with God. Men will be attracted to you, guaranteed.

Married women, you must have cooperated with God enough to catch the eye of your husband (and likely many other men), as well as his heart and mind. Your husband will appreciate it if you continue to work with God at least to the same degree you did to originally attract him. If you don’t, you inadvertently send him a message that you love him less than you originally did. And your husband will really appreciate it if you make an even greater effort to cooperate with God to achieve your greatest God-given potential of beauty, spirit, soul and body. That sends him the message, “I love you more than I ever have.”

Speaking of your husband, unless he is a monster, he will be very sympathetic regarding the beauty challenges of pregnancy and post-pregnancy. And he should be, as he is the impregnator. That being said, pregnancy does not ultimately rob any woman of her God-given beauty potential, and husbands appreciate their wives’ post-pregnancy efforts to work with God to reach that potential.

Beyond that, your husband, unless he is a monster, is also very sympathetic toward the beauty challenges of time and gravity. He doesn’t expect you not to grow older as he also does. He only hopes that you live up to your fullest God-given beauty potential, again, spirit, soul and body. When you do, it sends him the message that you love him. And he knows he has no right to expect of you what he neglects regarding himself. Jabba the Hutt has no right to complain when Princess Leia puts on a few pounds, right? Right.

A wise and good husband frequently tells his wife how beautiful she is. That sends her the message that he appreciates her efforts to cooperate with God to achieve her God-given beauty potential. His encouragement, rather than criticism, is much more likely to motivate her to make even more effort toward that end. Trying to motivate your wife (or husband) to change by criticism is somewhat like trying to grow tomatoes by withholding water from your tomato plants. What would you think of the gardener who said, “I’m not going to give those tomato plants any water until I see some tomatoes. That ought to motivate them!”?

And when a woman calls her husband’s attention to her perceived flaws (all women think they have flaws, including even Miss Universe contestants and our Shulammite), she isn’t hoping he’ll say, “Amen.” She wants to hear his uplifting, contradicting opinion.

Our shepherd had that figured out. As beautiful as his wife apparently was, she was ashamed of her dark skin, and we find her trying to explain the reason for it to the other women in Solomon’s harem:

Do not stare at me because I am swarthy [or “black”],
For the sun has burned me
My mother’s sons were angry with me;
They made me caretaker of the vineyards,
But I have not taken care of my own vineyard (Song 1:6)

Many Asian cultures tend to perceive lighter skin as more desirable, and skin-bleaching is very common among women who desire to make themselves more attractive. Imagine all the women of Solomon’s harem, upon seeing the Shulammite for the first time when she was brought into the harem, collectively thinking to themselves, “Wow, she’s really beautiful, but her skin is so unattractively dark.” That likely actually happened according to Song 1:6. It is also very likely that our shepherd would have considered lighter skin to be more beautiful. But you won’t find him mentioning the darkness of her skin anywhere in Solomon’s Song. He only compliments her, focused on all the positive aspects of her beauty. Husbands, take note!

Why Your Woman Needs Encouragement

Male readers, please allow me to help you see the world through female eyes. Unfortunately, from birth, all women find themselves captive contestants in a universal, never-ending beauty contest. They are all very much aware that they are continually being compared with other women, and that they are valued more or less according to their physical attractiveness. Additionally, it is not only men who sit in the judges’ section of that endless beauty contest, but women as well, who all compare themselves with each other. We’ve already noted how our Shulammite felt her skin was too dark, no doubt comparing herself to other women, and how all the women in Solomon’s harem thrice expressed their belief that our Shulammite was the “most beautiful among women” (Song 1:8; 5:8; 6:1).

In that sense, Solomon’s harem was a microcosm of the world’s endless universal beauty contest, and it is also somewhat analogous to the Miss Universe Contest. All the women of Solomon’s harem, like our Shulammite, were chosen because of their beauty. They, unlike all the women in their hometowns who were not selected for the harem, survived the “first round of eliminations.” But that was just the beginning of the beauty contest from which those “lucky” ladies could not escape.

Once among the hundreds of other women in the harem, they found themselves competing with one another for Solomon’s affections. How utterly miserable was that? I wonder if they feigned happiness and applauded, just like runners-up contestants at the crowing of the new Miss Universe, whenever one from among them was selected by Solomon to be his Saturday night sleeping partner? The entire enterprise seems awful from beginning to end, and I speak not only of Solomon’s harem and the Miss Universe Contest, but also the world’s never-ending beauty contest that is designed to make most women feel like losers.

But here’s the important thing: If my surmised plot of Solomon’s Song is accurate, our shepherd ultimately succeeded in rescuing the Shulammite from the hell of Solomon’s harem, as well as from the bigger beauty contest it represents. Once she was delivered, it no longer mattered what Solomon thought, what the women in his harem thought, or what anyone else thought. All that mattered was what one man thought, and that man made sure she knew he thought she was beautiful.

Husbands, take note! One of your jobs is to deliver your wife from the Miss Universe competition. She needs to know that in your eyes she is the most beautiful woman in the world. She definitely has several advantages over all other women in that regard, in that she is the only woman to whom you have exclusive rights to enjoy all of her beauty, and for the rest of her life.

The late Joe Cocker—with his soulish, sandpaper singing voice—encapsulated these sentiments masterfully in his enchanting 1974 rendition of You are So Beautiful. He seems to be trying to convince his lover of something she doesn’t believe; six times in the song he slowly repeats, “You…are…so…beautiful.” Too much evidence to the contrary, however, has been amassed in her mind, and so six times he adds two more words that have the force to sweep away all her objections: “…to me.” It doesn’t matter what anyone else might think, including even her. He thinks she’s beautiful.

You are so beautiful
To me
You are so beautiful
To me

But even that is not enough to persuade a woman whose self-image has been molded all her life by unfair comparisons, including her own. So he “doubles down,” first by questioning why she can’t see what is so obvious to him, and then by affirming that he, contrary to what she may suspect, never lowered his standards during his search for a beautiful woman. She was “everything he’d hoped for.” And although she may doubt her adequacy of her attractiveness now, he isn’t wishing for someone else. She’s “everything he needs.”

Can’t you see
You’re everything I hoped for
You’re everything I need
You are so beautiful
To me

What woman would not want a man like that?

I do hope that my words addressed primarily to husbands in the past few paragraphs aren’t interpreted by any wives as being a retraction of anything I wrote earlier to them. Don’t expect your husband to believe what you won’t help him believe. As you work with God to achieve and maintain your fullest beauty potential for him, it will help him to see you as the most beautiful woman in the world—because you will be the only woman in the world making yourself beautiful exclusively for him. Although he hopefully delivered you from the Miss Universe contest when he married you, don’t forget that you went home with one of the judges!

Men Weigh In

You perhaps have heard that recent studies show that women who carry a little extra weight live longer than the men who mention it. Women are often very sensitive regarding their weight, and because of that, husbands are generally very hesitant to broach the subject. That, however, doesn’t alter men’s first and third greatest emotional needs (according to Willard Harley).

You may recall me recommending in Chapter Seven one of Shaunti Feldhahn’s helpful books, titled For Women Only: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men.[9] Based on her surveys of thousands of men, Feldhahn helps female readers tap into male minds on key relationship issues. It is certainly no surprise that she devoted a chapter midway through her book on the importance of sex to men. She cautiously waited until near the book’s end, however, to address the sensitive topic of the importance of female physical appearance to men. And she wisely begins that chapter by encouraging her female readers to first pray for protection from being hurt by what they are about to read! Then, to further disarm them, she continues introducing her topic with some humble self-deprecation:

Okay, ready? This chapter is about something our men desperately want us to know but feel absolutely unable to tell us: The effort you put into your appearance is extremely high on his priority list. Yet the chances that you know his true feelings are extremely low.

What I’ve learned about men’s needs in this area—including my husband’s—has been life changing. It has jarred me out of a dangerous complacency. Perhaps it will jar you out of yours.

Call me naïve, but I just didn’t realize that a wife’s or girlfriend’s appearance was such a big deal—such an imperative deal—for the guy. Important, yes. Imperative, no. Of course, having learned just how visual men are, I should have gotten a clue. But somehow I assumed that if I was out of shape, I was the only person who was negatively affected.

Feldhahn explains that female physical appearance involves more than just weight and shape. Sloppy dressing, neglected hair and cosmetic inattention are also interpreted by husbands as signs that his wife doesn’t care about him. When she does “take care of herself,” however, he feels loved. Feldhahn continues:

Ever since I decided to add a chapter about this issue, the male response has been astonishing. In fact, when I describe all the topics of the book to a guy, do you know which one he is most likely to seize on as something he wished his wife understood? You got it—this one (sex and respect were close seconds). Most of the men who hear about this subject thank me: “Thank you for saying what we are thinking but could never, ever say.” “Thank you for taking on a subject that is so taboo, especially in Christian circles.”

Feldhahn expects that most of her female readers will be as surprised as she was by this revelation. The reason many women are surprised is because they are not like men in this regard. Their man’s physical appearance is generally not as important to them as their physical appearance is to their man.

If you are a surprised female reader who doubts Feldhahn’s findings, I would encourage you to ask your husband how important your physical appearance is to him. It is more important to some husbands than others, and perhaps you are married to a man who is cut from a different cloth than most of us. But please make it easy for him to be honest with you because, chances are, when you bring up the subject, his mind will be racing through possible answers and possible consequences of those answers. If he knows you are sensitive, he may lie, because he doesn’t want to hurt you. Don’t open the conversation by saying to him, “Please assure me you aren’t one of those shallow jerks who expects his wife to never gain a pound!”

Female readers, trust me when I say that most men wish at times that someone could wave a magic wand and change their male nature. To be released from our “shallowness” and visual sexual orientation, to not care about the physical appearance of our wives, to feel zero attraction to other females besides our wives, to achieve sexual sainthood, or perhaps even better, to have no sex drive at all! That would eliminate so many problems. (Of course, that would also be the end of the human race, not to mention tons of fun…) Regardless, it doesn’t seem anyone will be applying for a patent for such a magic wand anytime in the near future. Moreover, the way we men are is the way God created us. So we beg for your understanding!

Continuing Where Angels Dare Not Tread

Allow me to continue quoting the very wise Shaunti Feldhahn as she attempts to walk through a minefield:

Now, nearly all women have some form of body insecurity that we already worry about too much, and I’m not trying to add fuel to that fire! We’re hammered relentlessly by media messages that we should all be perfectly shaped and eternally young. But God didn’t create us to be Barbie dolls, and those fake and impossible ideals only drive women into eating disorders and other miserable, unhealthy obsessions. This chapter is only dealing with weight, fitness, and appearance issues that we can healthfully do something about.

I’m sure all female readers appreciate that paragraph. I’d like to focus for a moment on the final sentence, which affirms what everyone knows cannot be debated: Everyone, male and female, can “do something about” their “weight, fitness, and appearance issues.”

Most everyone is motivated, at least to some degree, to care about those three things, and most everyone knows that one’s weight and fitness significantly affect one’s health. Being even a little overweight increases one’s risk for many serious diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, colon cancer, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and more.[10] So, apart from any relationship to male sexual satisfaction in marriage, there are major benefits for women (and men, of course) to be physically trim and fit. And when you add the benefit of male satisfaction in marriage, that should be plenty of motivation for any woman who loves herself and her husband to make an effort to take care of herself.

According to Feldhahn’s surveys of thousands of men, a wife’s efforts to that end are what is most important, and not that she look just like she did the day they first met. Additionally, 97% of husbands (according to Feldhahn’s surveys) would enthusiastically support, financially or otherwise, any efforts their wives made to improve their weight, fitness and appearance. Any wife who embarks on such an effort will experience immediate benefits in her marriage, which should help her better grasp how important her appearance is to her husband.

This is a book about sex, so there is no way to honestly avoid the subject of female beauty. I hope I’ve offered a helpful, balanced perspective. In the next chapter, I’ll share some tested and true insight on taking off and keeping off unwanted pounds for both women and men. Be glad, because you will soon be enjoying enhanced health, a more attractive appearance, an improved marriage, and better sex!

[1] Along those lines, I recall once hearing an American Pentecostal minister who quipped, “You’ll never win the world with ugly women!” That same minister once asked in a sermon, “Is it a sin for women to wear makeup? I think that, in some cases, it’s a sin for them not to wear makeup!” That was in the 1980s. I doubt any minister could get away with saying those same things in today’s culture.

[2] The word “merely” is italicized in the NASB, indicating that it was not found in the original Greek, but was added by the translators.

[3] They can only be a special group of human men or angels. One problem with the “sons of God” being identified as angels who married human females is the fact that Jesus said that angels do not marry, implying that they have no desire or capacity for sex; see Matt. 22:29-30.

[4] Obviously, male attraction to female beauty is not lust. Male lust occurs when a man looks at a woman and “commits adultery with her in his heart,” as Jesus said.

[5] I’ve only met one man in my life who married a woman whom he did not think was physically attractive, and he told me it was because he felt God was requiring him to marry her. (I sure hope he never told her that.)

[6] It is interesting how confused Western culture continually sends contradicting messages regarding female beauty. On the same webpage of Yahoo! News, for example, you can often find articles with titles like, “Celebrity Woman Claps Back at Instagram Body Shamers” followed by another article titled, “Celebrity Woman Flaunts Her Toned Abs in White Crop Top.”

[7] Clitoris: the small, sensitive, erectile part of the female genitals at the anterior end of the vulva. Labia: the inner and outer folds of the vulva, at either side of the vagina.

[8] The fact that there are at least 50 English slang synonyms for “female breasts” (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Thesaurus:breasts) is further indication of male interest.

[9] May I also recommend the companion book, For Men Only: A Straightforward Guide to the Inner Lives of Women. I think both should be required reading for all married couples. I’ve given copies of both to a number of couples whom I love.

[10] See www.webmd.com/diet/news/20010709/even-being-slightly-overweight-increases-risk-for-many-diseases

The post You are So Beautiful appeared first on David Servant.

PLEASE NOTE: This e-teaching is not appropriate for children, preadolescents, and many adolescents.

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
If you find my beloved,
As to what you will tell him:
For I am lovesick.

What kind of beloved is your beloved,
O most beautiful among women?
What kind of beloved is your beloved,
That thus you adjure us?

My beloved is dazzling and ruddy,
Outstanding among ten thousand.
His head is like gold, pure gold;
His locks are like clusters of dates
And black as a raven.
His eyes are like doves
Beside streams of water,
Bathed in milk,
And reposed in their setting.
His cheeks are like a bed of balsam,
Banks of sweet-scented herbs;
His lips are lilies
Dripping with liquid myrrh.
His hands are rods of gold
Set with beryl;
His abdomen is carved ivory
Inlaid with sapphires.
His legs are pillars of alabaster
Set on pedestals of pure gold;
His appearance is like Lebanon
Choice as the cedars.
His mouth is full of sweetness.
And he is wholly desirable.
This is my beloved and this is my friend,
O daughters of Jerusalem (Song 5:8-16).

Although the Shulammite’s metaphors and similes regarding her beloved husband may seem unusual to most modern readers, there is no mistaking one thing: she liked him very much. And although it is probably safe to assume he was a young man of good character, her admiration of him (that you just read) focuses on his face and body. Take note that we are still reading from the Bible, and it is safe to assume that her enthusiasm over an attractive male was God-given. So this is not an “unspiritual” topic.

To her, he was one in ten thousand (Song 5:10). In reality, of course, that was highly improbable. Not only are good-looking young men fairly common, but she likely had not seen 10,000 men in her entire life, much less made a comparative analysis. But no one called her out for her illusion, because everyone knows that being in love tends to muddle one’s mind. Brain scans of people caught in the throes of romantic love actually prove this. If you show them a photo of their special one, their brains light up in those regions that are rich with dopamine, the “feel-good” neurotransmitter. Being in love makes people dopey! Their brain scans actually resemble those of people who are high on alcohol or cocaine.

Additionally, neuroscientists have discovered that romantic love deactivates a neural pathway responsible for negative emotions, such as fear and social judgment. Lovers are consequently hampered from making critical assessments of other people, including their lovers. Indeed, “love is blind.”[1]

There is no doubt that our Shulammite and her shepherd were both love-struck with each other. Did their initial infatuation ever wear off? We don’t know, but some of the same neuroscientists who’ve documented how romantic love fuels the reward circuits of people’s brains with dopamine discovered that the brain scans of some older couples—who have been married for decades—still light up when they talk about each other. Such couples have learned the secret to keeping romantic love alive—by meeting each other’s deepest emotional needs. Any couple that has lost romantic love can kindle it again by making an effort to meet those needs.

Her Admiration

You may recall from the previous chapter that Willard Harley listed “admiration” as the fifth most-commonly expressed emotional need of the many men whom he surveyed over the years.[2] The Shulammite certainly had that base covered, as revealed by her admiration of her man before “the daughters of Jerusalem” in the passage I quoted at the beginning of this chapter. Her public praise of him echoed her private admiration (see Song 1:16). I’m sure her husband appreciated both.

I always inwardly cringe when I hear someone publicly criticize their spouse, and it’s even worse when their spouse is actually present. It is a sure sign that romantic love is dying or has already died. Public criticism of one’s spouse can be emotionally and sexually devastating. Even making light-hearted jokes about one’s spouse, as some couples do as a means of entertaining their friends or associates, can be very dangerous. If you’ve read the entire Song of Solomon, can you imagine how shocking it would have been to read even a single negative comment from either the Shulammite or shepherd?

His hands are rods of gold
Set with beryl;
His abdomen is carved ivory
Inlaid with sapphires.
His legs are pillars of alabaster
Set on pedestals of pure gold;
There are, however, two warts under his left foot.

Had our shepherd heard that added line about his warts, it would have drained all the dopamine his brain had gained from hearing her compliments about his ivory-carved abs and alabaster-pillared legs!

Many men daily face a world that seems to be full of faultfinders and critics. They feel as if they have targets painted on their chest and back. That is one reason every husband needs his wife to be his #1 fan. When he feels like the world is against him, he must know that she believes in him. If he fails, she needs to remind him of how successful he has been in so many areas of his life. And her admiration and encouragement should be constant, every day, not just when he is struggling. If a husband feels his wife has joined the chorus of his critics, it can be devastating to him.

And who would argue that wives—whether they are also at work in the trenches or are coping with the challenges of staying home to care for children—don’t need just as much encouragement from their husbands? Just as his fifth most-important emotional need for admiration precludes his wife’s criticism, so her most important emotional need—for affection—holds him to at least the same standard. Affectionate husbands don’t tear down their wives with negativity.

There are, of course, times when a wife’s gentle correction or confrontation of her husband is appropriate, just as there are times when a husband’s gentle correction or confrontation of his wife is appropriate. But in every case, any perceived criticism should be sandwiched between sincere and loving compliments and affirmations, just as they should be in any confrontation in any human relationship. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Without the sugar, criticism can cut like a knife. For many men, one critical word from the woman who means so much to them has the capacity to overpower all the testosterone in their body. And when a man doesn’t desire sex, something has really gone wrong. He’s probably wounded.

In contrast, any husband who hears his wife bragging about him in public (as the Shulammite did regarding the shepherd) is going to feel a dopamine surge in his brain. Private admiration has a similar effect. Wives, take note!

Another Secret from the Shulammite

Wives, if you really want to encourage your husband, there is another secret you can learn from the Shulammite. Nothing is more encouraging to a man than when his wife initiates sex. When he feels that she desires him, rather than that she is only willing to yield to his advances, the world is a different place. A wife who initiates sex has the ability to overrule any negativity or criticism her husband is enduring out in the world.

Our Shulammite certainly had that figured out as well. She desired her man, and he knew it. Take note that the opening lines of the Song of Solomon are her words: “May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine” (Song 1:1). That is an expression of female sexual desire. Before long, she elaborated: “Let his left hand be under my head / And his right hand embrace [or caress] me” (Song 2:6). Our Shulammite knew exactly what she wanted, and she was not hesitant to declare it.

Later in the same chapter, her desire surfaces again, as she expresses her longing for her husband’s evening return from pasturing his flock in the countryside. She dreams of him running to her “like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains” (Song 2:16), an expression of female sexual urgency, the kind of which husbands dream. We can only imagine what was in store for our shepherd when he walked through the door.

Although it is common knowledge that the sexual desire of the average female is generally less than that of the average male, wise wives know that expressing sexual desire for their husbands, or taking sexual initiative, is a sure means of speaking his “love language.” All husbands desire that their wives would desire them just as much as they desire their wives. But a common complaint among husbands is that they are the only ones who ever verbally express their desire or initiate sex.

So wives, take a tip from our Shulammite. Don’t just say, “I love you” or, “You are my honey,” as nice as those things are. Try paraphrasing our Shulammite by saying, “Please hurry home, because I really need to make love to you,” or “I want some of your luscious kisses,” or “I’ve been dreaming of your caresses.” The more specific, the better. And if those kinds of expressions embarrass you, or you think they are inappropriate or too “forward,” it might be good to renew your mind by reading Solomon’s Song every day for a month! Again, we’re reading from the Bible.

Sex Outside the City

There’s still more that can be learned from our Shulammite. Because her husband was often away from home, perhaps for days at a time seeking pasture for his flock, she would not always wait for his return, but would go looking for him (Song 1:7-8). Keep in mind that she had no means of communicating with him by phone or text, so her appearance would have been a surprise. How did that make him feel? Very desired.

When she found him, their passion would not allow the discretion of delaying intimacy until returning to the privacy of their home. Rather, they found secluded spots outdoors, whether under distant trees, in rock crevices of steep hillsides, or among vineyard rows:

[Her:] You are so handsome, my love,
pleasing beyond words!
The soft grass is our bed;
fragrant cedar branches are the beams of our house,
and pleasant smelling firs are the rafters (Song 1:16-17, NLT).

[Him:] O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
In the secret place of the steep pathway,
Let me see your form,
Let me hear your voice;
For your voice is sweet,
And your form is lovely (Song. 2:14).

[Her:] Come, my beloved, let us go out into the country,
Let us spend the night in the villages.
Let us rise early and go to the vineyards;
Let us see whether the vine has budded
And its blossoms have opened,
And whether the pomegranates have bloomed.
There I will give you my love (Song 7:11-12).

Our Shulammite’s invitation for her husband to inspect the vineyards almost seems to be public pretext for finding a private outdoor place to reveal her beauty. She certainly knew how to arouse his anticipation. Wives, take note! Although I’m not advocating the risk of outdoor sex, your husband is likely to follow you anywhere if you promise him sex when you get there.

Sex in the City

During one prolonged absence—perhaps during that time when she was being held captive in Solomon’s harem—she thought about him every night as she lay alone in her bed. I like to imagine her receiving word that her husband, upon discovering her abduction, had traveled to Jerusalem to secure her rightful freedom. One night she somehow managed to temporarily escape Solomon’s harem, and she searched for her beloved shepherd throughout the streets and squares of Jerusalem. Ultimately, she found him:

The watchmen who make the rounds in the city found me,
And I said, “Have you seen him whom my soul loves?”
Scarcely had I left them
When I found him whom my soul loves;
I held on to him and would not let him go
Until I had brought him to my mother’s house,
And into the room of her who conceived me (Song 3:3-4).

Their own home would have been far away from Jerusalem in a country village, but apparently the Shulammite’s mother owned a Jerusalem house to which she could gain access. Upon finding her husband, she not only “held on to him and would not let him go,” but then led him to her mother’s house, risking discovery by a watchman who might report that a member of Solomon’s harem was involved in a secret rendezvous. We don’t have to imagine what occurred when she brought her husband into “the room of her who conceived me” (Song 3:4).

I’m pointing out all these details as evidence that the Shulammite was not a passive lover. She was very comfortable with her own sexual desires, and she was not the “good wife” who was always willing to submit and stoically fulfill her husband’s need for sex every 72 hours. No, in the Song of Solomon, which is part of the Bible, she is portrayed as being just as sexually driven as her husband, and without shame.

The Apex Senses

In this and the previous chapter, we’ve considered two passages in Solomon’s Song that describe the physical attractiveness of the two lovers for each other in their own words. There are other similar passages we could consider. Although the sexual nature of the average woman is not as visually-oriented as that of the average man, women do take note of male attractiveness. That is why single men work so hard to make themselves look good to the opposite sex, and why wise husbands, like wise wives, do their best to maintain their physical attraction even as time and gravity work against them.

For some wives, their husband’s appearance is more important than to other wives, and the way to find out how important it is to your wife is to ask her. Husbands, if there is anything she wishes you would change or work on, then do it out of love for her (and especially if you’ve made any similar request of her). She’ll feel loved, and she’ll doubtlessly reciprocate with some love. Physical appearance isn’t everything, but it is something.

Sex was designed by God to be a physical, emotional and spiritual experience, and the best sex involves the most heightened and enjoyable stimulation of those three elements. The physical component involves all five human senses, with sight generally being the apex sense for men and touch being secondary, while touch is generally the apex sense for women, and sight is secondary. Those are complemented by hearing, smell and taste, and all five are alluded to in the lovers’ dialogue in Solomon’s Song.

All this being so, it is a helpful exercise for husbands and wives to discuss the differences between their sexual sensory hierarchies. That could help them know how to be better lovers, just as a discussion of each other’s most important emotional needs can help them have a better marriage in general.

The sensory hierarchical differences between men and women are no doubt why it was men whom Jesus addressed regarding looking at the opposite sex with lustful desire (see Matt. 5:28), and why Paul wrote, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman” (1 Cor. 7:1, emphasis added).

Those two negative warnings, however, reveal some positive truths when considered within the context of marriage. There is nothing wrong—and in fact there is everything right—for a wife to attract her husband visually so that he desires sex with her, and it is also good for a husband to touch his wife in a way that makes sex most enjoyable to her. When husbands or wives assume that the opposite sex’s sexual sensory hierarchy is the same as their own, it can lead to frustration. That differing hierarchy, for example, is why men don’t want to make love in a completely-darkened room. It is also why there is a large market for women’s nightwear and no market for men’s nightwear.

Because the apex sexual sense for men is sight and the apex sexual sense for women is touch, wives desire and enjoy being lovingly and skillfully touched by their husbands to a similar degree as husbands desire and enjoy seeing their wife’s beauty, and vice versa. Loving husbands focus foremost (but not exclusively) on their touching skills and loving wives focus foremost (but not exclusively) on their physical attractiveness.

Here is another way of looking at this sensory difference: Husbands, do you enjoy hugging and snuggling with your wife? She probably enjoys it even more than you do. Do you enjoy kissing her? She probably enjoys it even more. Do you enjoy being touched by her in certain places, in certain ways, at certain times? She probably enjoys being touched by you in certain places, in certain ways, at certain times even more.

Wives, do you enjoy looking at your husband and admiring his masculinity? He probably enjoys looking at you and admiring your femininity even more. Do you enjoy seeing him in the buff from different angles? There is good reason to suspect that he enjoys seeing you naked from various angles even more. Do you enjoy seeing his body move? He enjoys seeing your body move even more.

Armed with that understanding, married couples know what to do to continually enhance their love lives. They work at fulfilling each other’s apex sexual sensory desires—without neglecting the lesser ones—and not just during sex, but all the time. For loving husbands, one daily goal is to perfect a “heavenly touch,” expressed in many different ways on which I will shortly elaborate. To not strive for that end is to deprive his wife of her fullest capacity to be loved as well as experience sexual ecstasy.

Although Paul’s well-known words to married couples, “Stop depriving one another” (1 Cor. 7:5), have primary application to the selfishness expressed by total sexual deprivation, the principle certainly has wider application. Loving couples don’t want to sexually deprive each other to any degree. Thus they strive to bless each other sexually to the fullest, which takes them on a journey of love, patience, honesty, trust, communication, discovery and learning. It is a blessed journey, designed in heaven.

Specific Guidance for Husbands

Now I’d like to turn my attention primarily toward husbands. I hope that male readers recall from the previous chapter that sex is not supposed to be a periodic event in marriage, but rather just one component of a never-ceasing continuum of love. Husbands, that continuum should include lots of daily touching that includes holding her hand, hugging her, putting your arm around her waist or shoulders, sitting close to her, and kissing her. Those are all expressions of affection—her #1 emotional need according to Willard Harley’s research. But if your wife notices that you only do those things on days when you have an expectation for sex at the end of the day, she interprets them as serving your ends and not as genuine affection.

Husbands, if you want to know if your wife is satisfied, or feeling deprived, in regard to your daily affectionate touch, the way to find out is to ask her. Since I’m giving you that advice, I thought I’d ask my wife how I’ve been doing, and since I know I’m a champ, I figured I’d reap some admiration (my 5^th greatest emotional need according to Dr. Harley). So I stopped writing this paragraph and asked her, “Honey, are you receiving sufficient daily expressions of my affection through the many ways I touch you?” Without a moment’s hesitation, she smiled and said, “Never!” I took that as short for, “You are doing a wonderful job, but it is impossible to give any woman too much affection.”

By the way, don’t hide that affection for your wife from others. When you hold your wife’s hand in public, she feels good that you are not ashamed to let everyone know that she is yours. Public kisses (short, but sweet ones) and putting an arm around her waist or shoulders lets her know she’s special. If your Victorian reserve prohibits such public displays, I suggest first practicing them in front of your children who, by the way, need to grow up seeing their father’s regular affection for their mother.

And all that touching doesn’t need to end once you crawl in bed! (Husbands, I know what you are thinking, but that is not what I’m talking about.) Us old-timers have a word for lying close together sideways, front to back with knees bent. It’s called “spooning,” because you fit together like two spoons. And husbands, if you’ll hug her from behind with your free arm, you’ll be sending her a nice message as she falls asleep. That “indent” between her hip bone and rib cage was designed, in part, for your arm to nicely fit through.

Who’s Depriving Who?

Husbands, your consistent daily and nightly affection for your wife, which includes, among other things, physically touching her in different ways, is essential foreplay. If you want to be a good lover, that is where you must start. If you aren’t showering your wife with affection, you really don’t have the right to have sex with her. You might have the legal right and letter-of-the-law biblical right, but you don’t have the moral right. Expecting your wife to accommodate your need for sex while depriving her of her need for affection is not only hypocritical, it is Neanderthal. (In fact, even some Neanderthals figured out that, in order to lure women into their caves, they had to say nice things to them.)

So allow me to stop beating around the bush and just be frank… Men who complain that their wives are depriving them of sufficient sex “in contradiction to the Bible’s clear teaching,” should ask themselves if they might actually be the ones who are depriving their wives of sex—by depriving them of the essential foreplay of affection. Remember, husbands, sex is not an event that occurs within marriage. Sex is a component of the never-ceasing continuum of love. That means you are always making love to your wife, and your nonstop lovemaking at times includes sex. Adopting that attitude results in a better marriage and better sex.

Some husbands—who, as hopeless Neanderthals, have trouble grasping these concepts—have found enlightenment in viewing their marital relationship as always being in one of three phases: pre-sex, sex, and post-sex. The pre-sex phase, which is far and away the longest, has everything to do with the quality and frequency of the sex phase. It should be filled with affection. And the post-sex phase should look just like the pre-sex phase, also filled with affection. So there are really only two phases! This can’t be made any simpler!

Many years ago I heard the adage, “There is no such thing as frigid wives, just bumbling husbands.” Although that may be an overgeneralization, it certainly contains some truth, and it has application to sincere Neanderthals who are trying to master the three phases of their marital lives. Affection can melt an iceberg. Now let’s talk about that second phase.

The Special Touch

As I’ve previously mentioned, because touch is generally the apex sexual sense for women, loving husbands focus on mastering their lovemaking touch. They want their wives to experience their highest potential for sexual pleasure.

In order to succeed, they need guidance from their wives. Without that guidance, men can make wrong assumptions based on their own male preferences regarding sexual touch. Men and women don’t necessarily enjoy being touched in identical ways. And that is how God designed it. It has a way of teaching married couples to be unselfish, and in so doing, to reap a blessing by being a blessing.

Husbands, the best way for you to learn how to please your wife is not from a how-to book, but to simply ask her because, although all women are similar, none are identical. You have a custom-made wife. So she needs a customized touch from her custom husband.

Of course, depending on a woman’s level of sexual experience, she may or may not know what “turns her on,” or her understanding may be incomplete. Marriage is the place for “full discovery” for both women and men, to learn not only how to please each other, but to discover what pleases themselves. It is a journey of years, and that is how God designed it. For that reason, ongoing communication is essential.

So, husbands, take the lead. If you haven’t already, ask your wife to teach you how to touch her. (If you’ve already asked her in the past, then request the most up-to-date refresher.) Make it easy for her to tell you what she likes and what she may not like. And your inquiry should not just be about the geographical location of her “erogenous zones,” that is, those areas of her body that, when touched in a certain way, trigger her sexual arousal. There are scores of other variables, such as amount of pressure, means of touch (fingers, hands, lips and so on), needed lubrication (if any), kind of motion, pace and duration of that motion, as well as timing (there are places she likely will prefer not to be touched until she has reached a certain point of arousal). To make it even more interesting, erogenous zones can also shift as the body ages.

You could probably learn quite a lot by asking your wife to describe, in detail, her most ideal imaginary lovemaking session with you. I can guarantee you that her description will not depict the “touch” of intercourse occurring during the first five minutes of your lovemaking. Although your body may be ready for that in mere seconds, hers will not. You are the microwave oven; she is the slow-cooker. That is how God designed it. Premature intercourse can be very painful for a woman. Loving husbands are patient, and they go slow and enjoy the journey.

Apart from your wife describing her most ideal imaginary lovemaking session with you, another good time to request her guidance is when you are making love. She can tell you, or show you, what she likes. Unless she fully understands how God made her, there is room for lots of experimentation within your lovemaking, and she can learn about her own body simultaneously with her husband. She should make sure she gives him lots of verbal encouragement (“I like that!”) along with verbal guidance (“just a little lighter” or “try here”) to supplement the spontaneous signals of her pleasure.

I should point out that everything I wrote in the last two paragraphs also has application to wives touching their husbands, but keeping in mind that touch is his secondary apex sexual sense.

Back to our Shulammite

Husbands, listen to our Shulammite, whom we twice find in Solomon’s Song expressing her desire for her husband’s touch:

Let his left hand be under my head
And his right hand embrace me (Song 2:6; 8:3).

I can’t help but wonder what connotations the word “embrace” might include, as it would seem somewhat odd that she would be longing for nothing more than a specific kind of hug, one that required that they be lying down together with his left hand under her head and his right hand somehow wrapped around her. Moreover, embracing is most often spoken, not as something done with hands, but arms.

Perhaps she uses “embrace” as a substitute for “caress,” and there are a few Bible versions that translate it as such. If she was lying on her back, and he was lying on his left side propped up on his elbow with his left hand under her head, he would have had full access to caress the front of her body with his right hand as well as kiss her, something else she expressed a longing for (see Song 1:2). He could have enjoyed both seeing her and her response to his caresses.

May I remind readers once again that it is God who designed the amazing variation of sensitivity to touch across human skin, male and female. Some parts He designed to be more sensitive than others through a greater concentration of nerve endings at skin level. All men reading this realize that their genitals have the highest concentration of nerve endings on their bodies (by God’s design), and they also know that some parts of their genitals are significantly more sensitive than other parts (also by God’s design). They are correct if they assume that same is true for female genitals. But after that assumption, they need specific feedback from their custom-made wives. For novices, here is some basic information to get started:

Both the external tip of the female clitoris (your wife can explain where to find it) and the male glans (head of the penis) contain about 8,000 sensory nerve endings, both holding the record for the greatest concentration of touch-sensitive nerves in the human body. The small tip of the clitoris, however, packs those 8,000 nerve endings into an area that is 1/10^th the size of the glans, so it is extremely sensitive to touch. Unless directed otherwise by your wife, you will want to proceed only with gentleness, and only when she is ready.

As far as anyone knows, the only function of the female clitoris is sexual pleasure, and that is by God’s design. He created it purely for her sexual enjoyment. Interestingly, however, between 70% and 90% of women cannot reach a sexual climax, or orgasm,[3] by vaginal intercourse.[4] Clitoral stimulation is the missing ingredient. So, husbands, that is where your loving skill is needed, and you will, of course, need her guidance (as well as some kind of lubrication). In light of all the other metaphorical language in Solomon’s Song, I suspect that when our Shulammite spoke of her desire for her husband’s left hand to be under her head and his right hand to embrace her, she was thinking, at least in part, about what we’re talking about right now.

Shooting Some Sexual Sacred Cows

Not every female clitoris is the same, so reading a how-to book on the best way to touch your wife’s could be misleading. Again, your wife will need to be your guide, and ongoing communication is essential. Women who have experience masturbating should be able to offer some helpful guidance, but even they, just like women who don’t have such experience, will appreciate their husband’s creative experimentation and desire for simultaneous feedback. Husbands, make it your goal to become a master at making your wife enjoy her fullest God-given ecstatic potential.

Since there is a very good chance that your wife is among the majority of women who cannot experience orgasm by vaginal intercourse, and because there is every chance that you can, good husbands put their wife’s pleasure ahead of theirs. In the classic Christian book on marital sex, The Act of Marriage, authors Tim and Beverly Lahaye recommended that husbands manually stimulate their wives right to the verge of orgasm, and then attempt to achieve simultaneous orgasm through intercourse. But that isn’t achievable by everyone.

Beyond that, since the apex sexual sense of men is sight, husbands may not want to miss the pleasure of seeing their wife climax because of their own simultaneous climax. For that and other reasons, many couples are satisfied with separate orgasms, and there can be many variations on that theme, especially when she has capacity for multiple orgasms, as many women do.

Of course, intercourse is not necessary, not only for female orgasm, but also for male orgasm, and some husbands genuinely prefer a “hand job” over orgasm from intercourse. I realize that there are some Christians who believe that such a practice is somehow a sinful perversion of what God intended, and they sometimes refer to the biblical story of Onan, who “spilled his seed,” as proof. I think, however, that they are greatly mistaken (see Chapter 7). If the majority of women require some clitoral stimulation other than penile stimulation to achieve orgasm, that rules out the possibility that there is anything sinful about husbands manually stimulating their wives to orgasm. It would also then stand to reason that there is nothing sinful about wives manually stimulating their husbands to orgasm. Such a form of “mutual masturbation”[5] is not only pleasurable, but is an ancient form of birth control that works just as well in modern times. Incidentally, it is probably the primary form of birth control in the world today, especially among the world’s poor.[6]

In Summary

I’d like to close this chapter, in which I’ve primarily focused on helping men be better husbands, once again reminding them of Paul’s admonition for married couples not to deprive each other:

The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer… (1 Cor. 7:3-5).

When you think about it, those are shocking words for a man who wrote elsewhere that wives should submit to their husbands as does the church to Christ (Eph. 5:22-24), but not vice versa. Apparently, that principle doesn’t apply when it comes to marital sex. To paraphrase part of the above-quoted passage, Paul said that the wife is the boss over her husband’s body and the husband is the boss over his wife’s body. So husbands should submit sexually to their wives, and vice versa. That mutual submission precludes any sexual deprivation.

In their strictest sense, of course, Paul’s words warn of the selfish sin of total sexual deprivation. They have application, however, to the concept of striving for the highest potential of sexual fulfillment, as indicated by his admonition for mutual sexual submission. No one imagines Paul was telling husbands to just make sure they spent a few minutes every few days penetrating their wives. Rather, Paul wanted husbands to understand that their bodies should be used to serve their wives sexually. And he wanted wives to understand that their bodies should be used to serve their husbands sexually.

All of that is to say—in closing to husbands—we have been given our biblical sexual mandate that is included in our mandate to love our wives as Christ loves the church. That means loving our wives sexually so they experience their fullest potential for sexual pleasure. Now that’s a mandate that sounds like it could be a lot of fun!

[1] Take note that lovers are not only physiologically hindered from making critical assessments of each other, but of everyone else too. This could explain why “romantics” are so easily taken advantage of by selfish people.

[2] I would add “encouragement” to that as well, as most men are much more emotionally-frail creatures than what they convey to the world. May God help us all to encourage others. Only God knows how many dreams have died due to a word of discouragement—that could have been fulfilled through a word of encouragement. “Therefore encourage one another and build up one another” (1Th. 5:11).

[3] I am using the words climax and orgasm synonymously, although some use climax to describe the heightened sexual arousal that occurs just prior to orgasm.

[4] 10 to 15 percent of women reportedly never climax under any circumstances.

[5] “Mutual masturbation” is a phrase that is also used to describe a couple self-masturbating together.

[6] Other means of low-budget birth control include “coitus interruptus,” which is what Onan did, and “the rhythm method,” when couples attempt to avoid sex during the few days of monthly female fertility. Both methods can be risky regarding pregnancy.

The post Sexual Secrets of a Shulammite and a Shepherd appeared first on David Servant.

PLEASE NOTE: This e-teaching is not appropriate for children, preadolescents, and many adolescents.

How beautiful and how delightful you are,
My love, with all your charms!
Your stature is like a palm tree,
And your breasts are like its clusters.
I said, “I will climb the palm tree,
I will take hold of its fruit stalks.”
Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine,
And the fragrance of your breath like apples,
And your mouth like the best wine! (Song 7:6-9a).

Many people wonder how the Song of Solomon ever made it into the Jewish and Christian Bible. The usual explanation is that it was likely authored by Solomon (although no one knows for sure) who, according to 1 Kings 4:32, famously authored 1,005 songs. Beyond that, some theologians say that the sensuous scenes described in its chapters are actually allegories of God’s love for Israel or, prophetically, of Jesus’ love for His bride, the church.

It is certainly possible that a prolific polygamist and songwriter could have authored the Song of Songs, as it is alternatively called. Is it, however, an allegory for God’s love? No such claim is made anywhere within the Song of Solomon or elsewhere in the Bible. And I can’t resist asking: Is God’s love for His people truly analogous to a man admiring a woman’s breasts? Moreover, was Israel’s reciprocated love towards God of equal magnitude to His love for them, as is depicted between the lovers in Solomon’s song? Has the church’s reciprocated love been of equal magnitude? If God wanted to describe His devotion to Israel or the church with a marital metaphor, wouldn’t it seem more appropriate if He focused on His covenantal relationship and redemptive sacrifice, as He unmistakably did in other places in Scripture (for example, Is. 54:5-7; Hos. 2:19-20; Eph. 5:25-27)?

For these reasons, I’m not persuaded that the Song of Solomon is allegorical at all. Rather, I think it is a poetic validation of devoted love between a man and a woman and a celebration of monogamous marital sex, with all its desire, yearning, admiration, passion, pleasure, and exhilaration. By the close of this chapter, I hope you’ll agree.

I’m so glad the Song of Solomon is part of Scripture. I don’t think it was included in the Bible by accident but, like all the other books of the Bible, by God’s design. It affirms so much of what I’ve been trying to communicate in the previous nine chapters. Moreover, it offers insights into what contributes to the best sex. So let’s see what we can learn from it, because, as you know, sex is for Christians.

The Fuzzy Plot

If Solomon’s sensuous song has a plot, it is admittedly challenging to follow, in part because different people alternatively speak throughout its passages without any clear accompanying identification. Imagine reading an opera script without any references to who was to sing the individual parts. That is what it is like to read Solomon’s song.

Some Bible translations do attempt to identify speakers with added subtitles, but such identifications are speculative because they are not found in the original Hebrew text. So we must do our best to determine who the speakers are and when they are speaking.

It is clear that one of the speakers is a beautiful young woman, a “Shulammite” (Song 6:13), perhaps identifying her native village or region. Another speaker is her lover. Who is he? Many think Solomon, who is specifically mentioned in the Song ten times, seven by name[1] and three as “the king.”[2]

In most of those ten mentions, however, the speaker is not speaking to Solomon, but about him. In only one of those mentions is Solomon actually being spoken to, and it is not in one of the passages in which the lovers are admiring one another. Rather, it is a passage in which the Shulammite seems to gently snub Solomon (Song 8:11-12), and not even to his face, but in an imaginary way, a figure of speech known as apostrophe.

All of this is to say it is very possible that Solomon is never a speaker in the Song he may, or may not, have authored. Alternatively, it is possible that there are two male speakers who both express their admiration for the Shulammite’s beauty, one of them being Solomon, and the other being her true lover.

Keep in mind that if the Shulammite’s lover was Solomon, then the Song is all about their deep and mutual love for each other and the sexual attraction between them. That means she was thrilled to be Solomon’s highest-ranking sexual playmate among his growing harem that at the time included queens, concubines, and captive virgins-in-waiting (Song 6:8).[3] Her famous words, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” (Song 6:3) would have been better stated, “I am one of my beloved’s many lovers and I share him with scores of other women.”

You are probably starting to realize that I don’t buy into the idea that the Song of Solomon romanticizes polygamy. So if Solomon was not the Shulammite’s beloved, who was her lover who so poetically described her beauty in a way that makes Victorians blush?

Her Lover Revealed

He is a shepherd, and is repeatedly described as such,[4] which certainly disqualifies him from being Solomon. The Shulammite refers to him as “my beloved” twenty-five times,[5] as the one “whom my soul loves”[6] five times, and as “friend” once.[7] He refers to her as “my bride” six times,[8] and as his “sister” (an expression connoting familiarity and closeness) five times.[9] There is very good reason to think they were already married.

In the plot I’m suggesting, the story begins with the Shulammite being selected, because of her extraordinary beauty, for Solomon’s harem, not unlike the story of Esther.

Of course, if she was already married (or even betrothed), she was off-limits for Solomon. How could she end up in his harem?

If the poem is fictional, any narrative is possible, of course. If the plot is historical, however, perhaps she, like Esther, was selected by a government bureaucrat who stood to be rewarded for bringing an exceptional beauty like her into the harem. A king who ultimately possessed 700 wives and 300 concubines had to have help in finding so many women. Solomon may have had several field staff whose sole job was “female acquisition.”

That being so, the Shulammite may have been abducted when her beloved shepherd husband was far from home seeking pasture for his flock, as would have often been the case for shepherds who sought scarce plant life in the rock-strewn and barren wildernesses of Israel. And there were ways, or course, for ancient kings and their cronies to work around the pesky problems presented when they desired beautiful women who were already married. Remember what Solomon’s own father, David, did to get Bathsheba, and recall Abraham and Isaac’s fears of being killed by men who desired their wives. Who knows? The Shulammite’s shepherd-lover may have been running for his life as government agents, apart from Solomon’s knowledge, were looking for him in order to do what was necessary to make her a lawful wife or concubine for the king of Israel.

Keeping all of this in mind, note one of the opening lines of the Song that is sometimes interpreted as the expression of love by the Shulammite for Solomon: “Draw me after you and let us run together! The king has brought me into his chambers” (Song 1:4). That sounds romantic, especially if “draw me after you and let us run together” metaphorically means “let’s make passionate love that leaves us both breathless.” The Shulammite’s words, however, may not have been addressed to Solomon, but to her true love from whom she has been separated. Perhaps she was not wanting to run with the polygamous king. Rather, finding herself captive in his chambers with scores of his other playthings, perhaps she was dreaming that her beloved would rescue her so they could run from the king! Notice she didn’t say: “Draw me after you and let us run together! You have brought me into your chambers.” Rather, she said, “Draw me after you and let us run together! The king has brought me into his chambers.”

More Evidence that Solomon was not Her Lover

No one can argue that the theme of separation and longing for reunification does not surface throughout the Song. That being so, why would the Shulammite be separated from Solomon for any significant amount of time as one of his captive concubines or queens? Why would she dream about going out into the city streets to look for King Solomon, and when she finds him, imagine taking him inside her mother’s house (Song 3:4)? Why would she be longing for King Solomon to come to her, leaping on the mountains “like a gazelle or a young stag” (Song 2:8-9)? Why would she imagine King Solomon seeking her by “standing behind our wall…looking through the windows…peering through the lattice” (Song 2:9)? Solomon never needed to do anything that resembled those kinds of actions. He got whatever he wanted, including women.

Perhaps most importantly, why would the Shulammite ever so passionately desire Solomon, who at the time apparently already had scores of wives and concubines (Song 6:8) and who was destined to ultimately have 700 of the former and 300 of the latter?

All of this is to say, I’m persuaded that the admiration and longing expressed by the two lovers in the Song is that of the Shulammite bride and her beloved shepherd husband. They were separated from each other because she, due to her exceptional beauty, had perhaps been abducted for Solomon’s harem, the mishap of a government roundup of hundreds of eligible women.

It is possible that Solomon’s admiration of the newest member of his harem can also be found in a few of the Song’s passages. If so, we can imagine him, sensing her resistance and not initially realizing that her heart belonged to another, attempting to impress and flatter her.

Incidentally, the chorus of women who sometimes speak in the Song, identified as the “daughters of Jerusalem,” are possibly all members of Solomon’s harem. Why else would there be a group of women in Jerusalem who, together, unitedly also admired the Shulammite’s exceptional beauty, and in some passages of the Song dialogued with her?

If my suggested plot is correct, at the end of the story, the two lovers are reunited. And it’s a great story of faithful devotion. A poor, country girl, blessed with beauty, remained true to her husband, a simple shepherd. She could have succumbed to the temptation presented by her circumstance and probably risen in the harem to be one of Solomon’s queens, but she resisted. She is depicted as someone who understood the strength, devotion and value of genuine love, perhaps most memorably expressed in one of the closing passages of the Song:

Put me like a seal[10] over your heart,
Like a seal on your arm.
For love is as strong as death,
Jealousy is as severe as Sheol;
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
The very flame of the Lord.
Many waters cannot quench love,
Nor will rivers overflow it;
If a man were to give all the riches of his house for love,
It would be utterly despised (Song 8:6-7).

Perhaps that final sentence was a veiled reference to Solomon. All of his wealth could not pull her from her beloved.

The Foundation of Great Sex

If my suggested plot is correct, it reinforces the fact that the foundation for great sex is devoted love. The devotion expressed through a marriage covenant, of course, is the minimum requirement for that kind of love to exist. Only a lifelong commitment provides the security for the full expressiveness, passion, creativity and vulnerability of great sex. Outside of marriage, sex is cheapened. When you give your body to someone who is not willing to live with you and love you until death, you devalue yourself. [11]

That being said, the lovers in the Song of Solomon were actually more than just married. They were also deeply in love, a component that is missing from too many marriages. Being deeply in love affects every hour of one’s life and every aspect of lovers’ relationships with each other. Lovers are always in love, and sex is one highlight of a ceaseless continuum of love’s many expressions. For them, “foreplay” is all day, every day, expressed through endearing verbal admiration and thoughtful, love-building actions. Similarly, the “afterglow” of their lovemaking never fully fades. Lovers frequently find themselves anticipating and reminiscing, just like the couple in Solomon’s Song.

If you are married but not experiencing what I’ve just described, don’t be discouraged. Rather, be encouraged that your marriage, and your love life, can improve. But it is imperative that you see sex, not as an event unrelated to everyday married life, but as a component of continual love that is expressed in manifold ways.

That is the essence of the message of Dr. Kevin Leman’s popular book, Sex Begins in the Kitchen. Many husbands, in particular, don’t realize that peeling potatoes for their wives, as well as giving affectionate hugs, engaging in meaningful conversations, sending thoughtful texts, and playing with their children, set the stage for great sex. Wives, of course, can also enhance their love lives by many means outside the bedroom. Verbal encouragement and appreciation, recreational companionship, and attention to personal beauty are just some of the ways they can deepen marital love.

Different Sexes, Different Needs

What I have just described requires effort, but the payoff is well worth it. Many good books have been written to help married couples take positive steps to enhance their relationships and deepen their love, a subject beyond the scope of this book. That being said, because great sex is only found within great marriages, allow me to reference my favorite marriage-building book, His Needs, Her Needs, by Willard Harley, Jr.

Harley is a clinical psychologist who realized in the 1960s that the counsel he, as well as his peers, was giving to couples with troubled marriages wasn’t working. Most who sought professional marital therapy still ended up divorced. So Harley began asking those who were ready to call it quits, “What do you think it would take for you to be happily married again?” Most didn’t believe a happy marriage was possible, but when Harley persisted, the answer he repeatedly heard was, “for us to be in love again.” Every couple understood their relationship had at one time been blissful, but over the years, they had “fallen out of love.” So Harley set out to learn how he could help them fall back in love.

Applying the psychological principle of “learned associations,” he began counseling couples in crisis to do what it took to make each other feel good and avoid doing what made each other feel bad. Over time, Harley postulated, couples would begin to associate the consequent good feelings with their spouses, and fall back in love. And his theory proved to be correct. Couples who put Harley’s advice into practice recovered their lost romantic love and saved their marriages.

From interviewing thousands of couples, Harley eventually compiled a list of the five most commonly-expressed emotional needs of husbands and the five most commonly-expressed emotional needs of wives. That list of ten became the basis of his excellent book, His Needs, Her Needs, that has now sold over 2 million copies. Couples caught in troubled marriages who make the effort to understand and meet their spouses’ most important emotional needs find themselves falling back in love. Even couples that have good marriages can enhance their marriages by applying Harley’s principles.

I encourage you to get a copy of His Needs, Her Needs, but until you do, here are the ten emotional needs, listed in order of their importance, of husbands and wives:

For her:

1. Affection
2. Intimate conversation
3. Honesty and openness
4. Financial support
5. Family commitment

For him:

1. Sexual fulfillment
2. Recreational companionship
3. Physical attractiveness
4. Domestic support
5. Admiration

Note that not every husband or wife might compile their list in that same order of importance as the above list. Some might even add another emotional need to replace one of Harley’s five. For that reason, a worthwhile exercise for couples is for each to compile their own list to share with each other. Then they can go to work on meeting one another’s most important needs.

Also note that there is no overlap in Harley’s two lists. The primary emotional needs of the sexes are significantly different. Those who assume their spouse shares the same emotional needs as themselves will fail to meet their actual emotional needs, an error that can be disastrous.

His and Her #1 Needs

It is perhaps no surprise to both male and female readers that “sexual fulfillment” is on the top of the list for men, and their wives’ “physical attractiveness” is third. But what may well be a surprise to male readers is that affection is at the top of the list for wives.

Husbands who think that “affection” is another way of saying “sex” need a little education, and all they have to do to learn the difference is ask their wives! Affection is expressed in manifold ways, but all of them send the message, “I care about you.” Every non-affectionate husband has the capacity to start showing his wife affection, because affection is what he showered her with when he was originally pursuing her. She would, in fact, never have married him if he hadn’t given her affection when they were dating or courting. So all that non-affectionate husband needs to do is what he did when he was pursuing his wife. It is just that simple.

Wives who don’t receive adequate affection have trouble being motivated to meet their husbands’ need for sexual fulfillment. Sex apart from consistent, daily affection makes wives feel “used.” So wise husbands who want their wives to meet their #1 need are diligent to meet the #1 need of their wives. It also works the other way, of course. The husband or wife who works at meeting all the emotional needs of their spouse is very likely to find their spouse making efforts to meet their needs.

This is a principle that applies to every human relationship. Just as selfishness tends to breed a selfish response from others, so selflessness tends to breed a selfless response from others. We reap what we sow, and this is certainly true in a marriage relationship. Couples who ignore each other’s most important needs can soon find themselves caught in a vicious circle of selfishness, and they eventually realize they are descending in a downward spiral towards marital hell. On the other hand, couples who focus on meeting each other’s emotional needs find themselves in a virtuous circle of selflessness that lifts them towards marital heaven. The good news is that any couple caught in the downward spiral of selfishness can reverse their direction through unselfish efforts to meet one another’s most important needs.

In summary, great sex doesn’t begin with deep knowledge about sexual technique. It starts with being married and being deeply in love. And being deeply in love is not what is experienced by two self-focused, distracted people who live under the same roof and who schedule a twice-weekly, 30-minute romp in bed, after which they quickly return to their phone screens! Being deeply in love is all about focus. The lovers in Solomon’s song certainly weren’t having problems there. Let’s see what we can learn from them.

The Shepherd’s Sincere Admiration

I would love to take you through the entire Song verse by verse in pursuit of the plot I’ve suggested. That, however, would take a lot of time and space. So, let’s focus on some passages that might help us better enjoy sex as God intended.

Keep in mind that the Shulammite’s lover, a shepherd, would have been very in touch with the natural world. He spent his days, and probably many nights, outdoors in the wilderness, and with lots of time to observe all the details of God’s creation. So it is no surprise that he described his bride’s beauty with metaphors derived from nature, including references even to the goats and sheep he shepherded.

Keeping all of that in mind, and to set the stage for what we’re about to read in the Song’s fourth chapter, imagine him sitting on a hillside overlooking his flock while dreaming about the special woman who thrills him. Or, perhaps imagine him returning to their home at dusk, having safely corralled his flock with another shepherd’s and then walking many miles to reach her. Now, listen to their intimate conversation, either imagined in their thoughts or, better, expressed face to face as they both anticipate an unfolding evening together:

How beautiful you are, my darling,
How beautiful you are!
Your eyes are like doves behind your veil;
Your hair is like a flock of goats
That have descended from Mount Gilead.
Your teeth are like a flock of newly shorn ewes [female sheep]
Which have come up [white] from their washing,
All of which bear twins,
And not one among them has lost her young (Song 4:1-2)

The shepherd’s initial focus is on his lover’s face, and specifically her eyes, hair and teeth. He will soon be including her lips, mouth, cheeks and neck. He was obviously interested in details, and just about every man can easily relate to his God-given attraction to every aspect of her facial beauty. She, no doubt, was flattered by his compliments. For any male reader who mistakenly thinks that foreplay consists of sneaking up behind his wife in the kitchen and pinching her buttock, I hope you are paying attention! Take a tip from a shepherd: Foreplay starts with words. Nice words. First thing in the morning and throughout the day.

Few modern men would compare their lover’s hair to a flock of goats or her teeth to newly-shorn sheep, but we’re reading the sincere words of a simple shepherd, awkward as they might seem to us. I’m assuming the goats of his flock were mostly black, dark like her hair, and as they descended a mountain slope following him, he was reminded of the captivating natural waves of her long hair. Studies have shown that, generally speaking, men perceive long hair on females as being attractive, although they can’t explain why. It again seems to be instinctive rather than culturally learned, and surprisingly, even the New Testament affirms this:

Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her? (1 Cor. 11:14-15, emphasis added).[12]

I can certainly sympathize with women who prefer the practicality of short hair, and if you are one of them, please don’t become angry with me! Keep in mind that I’m in sales, not management. I didn’t write the Bible. I’m just supposed to faithfully convey what it contains. For that reason, I strongly encourage wives to adopt their husband’s hair preference, whether it be long, mid-length or short, because that is one of many ways wives can express their love for their men. And according to His Needs, Her Needs, a husband’s third most important emotional need is his wife’s physical attractiveness. (If you are single and trying to catch the eye of a good man, long hair is probably your best bet.)

What About the Proverbs 31 Woman?

So I’ve now officially broached the sensitive subject of beauty and female physical attraction. Any biologically-ignorant, uber-feminists who have endured reading this far are no longer with us. (I bid them farewell.) And a few Christians who think the subject is unspiritual or somehow misogynistic are inwardly disapproving. “Don’t you know,” they ask, “that the Bible declares: ‘Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised’?” (Prov. 31:30).

First, Proverbs 31:30 is one verse out of the Bible’s 31,000 verses. It does not contain the full revelation on the subject of human beauty. Neither does it, when rightly interpreted, contradict other relevant verses on the subject or any natural revelation that is evident apart from the Bible.

Proverbs 31:30 does not say, “Be as unattractive to your husband as you possibly can.” Nor does it say, “If you are a single woman who desires to be married, stay away from any man who demonstrates his lack of spirituality by any criteria he has for some degree of beauty.” Rather, Proverbs 31:30 simply affirms that spiritual character is more important than physical beauty, because spiritual character counts for eternity, whereas beauty is “fleeting” (an alternate translation for the Hebrew word translated “vain” in the NASB).[13]

Let’s face the brutal fact that youthful appearance is universally thought to be more attractive than aged appearance. Who can explain why? It is, once again, innate. In any case, beauty is indeed fleeting as we grow older. I’ll bet, however, that you, like me, imagine the new bodies all Christians will one day inherit will be ageless and beautiful. So what could be wrong with making an effort now on earth to preserve one’s God-granted beauty to a reasonable degree, even as “the outer man is decaying” (2 Cor. 4:16)?

Moreover, for a wife to make an effort to preserve her God-granted physical beauty as an expression of love for her husband is in fact a spiritual act. If her physical appearance is important to her husband, then striving to please him in that regard is an act of obeying Titus 2:4, which enjoins wives to love their husbands. Obeying the Bible is spiritual.

“If he really loved me, he wouldn’t care what I look like,” confused women sometimes claim. But he’s thinking, “If she really loved me, she would care what she looked like for me.” (What if he said, “If she really loved me, she wouldn’t care if I ever talked to her or showed her any affection”?)

The truth is, dear wives, if your husband was not physically attracted to you before you were married, he would not have married you. Your beauty was part of what motivated him to make his proposal. Most women understand that very well, which is why they work so hard to make themselves attractive when they are single. When they start dating or courting someone, they make themselves as attractive as possible for one person, him. And such a strategy often works in their favor…they land a good catch!

Some husbands, however, once landed in the marriage net, are dismayed to discover that they’ve been victims of a “bait and switch.” That is a term used in the world of sales that describes how unscrupulous merchants sometimes entice prospective buyers by offering something they actually don’t have to sell. But once they’ve lured buyers into their shop with the “bait,” they attempt to sell them something else. A man who marries a woman who is attractive to him but who allows herself to become unattractive to him feels betrayed. He signed up for something else. Of course, husbands are often also guilty of a “bait and switch” regarding the most important emotional needs of their wives. What they offered when dating turns out to not be included in the marriage package.

I’ll have more to say about this in the next chapter, but suffice it to say for now that it is obvious that the Shulammite’s beauty was a big factor in her lover’s affection for her, and we’ve only begun to examine all the biblical evidence for that. Yes, character is very important (see the previous chapter), but you won’t find one word about character from either lover in the Song of Solomon, and it is a book in your Bible!

More Verbal Foreplay

Let’s continue eavesdropping on the shepherd and the Shulammite:

Your lips are like a scarlet thread,
And your mouth is lovely.
Your temples [the NLT says “cheeks”] are like a slice of a pomegranate
Behind your veil.
Your neck is like the tower of David,
Built with rows of stones
On which are hung a thousand shields,
All the round shields of the mighty men (Song 4:3-4).

It is not clear how the shepherd could see his bride’s eyes (Song 4:1) and temples/cheeks (Song 4:3) if they were “behind her veil” as he twice said. We should probably imagine, not a full-facial veil, either transparent (like modern wedding veils) or opaque (like a Muslim burka). Rather, we should imagine a shawl that covered her head and shoulders, and that would have hidden her face from a side angle, and that could be pulled across her face if modesty required it.

Regardless, at this point of their foreplay, she was still wearing her head veil, and in spite of that, the beauty she was revealing to him was more than enough to spark his interest. She understood something about modesty that has been lost in many modern cultures. Revealing a little and hiding most is actually more attractive than revealing most and hiding a little, at least to men who aren’t looking for prostitutes. Women who, by their public attire send an overtly-sexualized message, cheapen themselves. They give to every man what should be reserved for just one. Married men whose wives are modest in public know they are special.

The Shulammite may well have also understood, like all wise wives, that maximum pleasure for her husband was achieved by creating a desire in him to see more of her beauty, which required initially hiding most of it, and then slowly revealing more of it at the right moments. The shepherd will soon be admitting that seeing a single strand of her necklace makes his heart rate increase (Song 4:9). It excites him because it reminds him that there is still more to see. Her skillful seduction was sweet torture to him.

Admiring her neck by comparing it to a stone citadel in Jerusalem on which are hung the shields of soldiers certainly seems odd to us. Perhaps the similarity is the cylindrical shape, and perhaps her beaded necklace reminded him of a row of shields hung on David’s tower around its circumference. I do not know. I wonder if this may be another unsophisticated metaphor of a simple shepherd whose sincerity eclipsed his poetic proficiency.

Seeing Double

Your two breasts are like two fawns,
Twins of a gazelle
Which feed among the lilies.
Until the cool of the day
When the shadows flee away,
I will go my way to the mountain of myrrh
And to the hill of frankincense (Song 4:5-6).

It is again difficult to see the similarities—in this case between her breasts and twin gazelle fawns—other than that both would be beautiful “twins” and both would be captivating (for males) to look at. It does again seem that we are reading the sincere but unsophisticated metaphors of a shepherd. But trust me, female readers, men do have the amazing capacity to see two identical things and think of female breasts! It is perhaps more understandable that hills and mountains, also mentioned in this passage, could trigger similar male thoughts. (You may not know that the famous McDonald’s arches not only represent the first letter of the restaurant’s name, but that they were designed to also subliminally suggest a pair of nourishing female breasts.)

Perhaps the shepherd is anticipating seeing after sunset what he had been imagining during the day, and the “mountain of myrrh” and “hill of frankincense” may also be references to his lover’s perfumed breasts. It is again hard to say, which is often how it is with poetry.

You are altogether beautiful, my darling,
And there is no blemish in you.
Come with me from Lebanon, my bride,
May you come with me from Lebanon.
Journey down from the summit of Amana,
From the summit of Senir and Hermon,
From the dens of lions,
From the mountains of leopards (Song 4:7-8).

This section makes me think we are reading about the shepherd’s imaginations while he was far from his bride, among the mountains of Lebanon for a season finding pasture for his flock. Perhaps he was dreaming of her being with him as he beheld the beauty of the remote landscape, and if she would be with him, how he would protect her from the danger of lions and leopards. She would see his bravery and know she was safe. (Men love to feel like protectors.) In any case, here’s another tip for men: Women love to know that you are thinking about them when you are apart. So let your woman know when you are dreaming about her.

Perfume is Scriptural!

You have made my heart beat faster, my sister, my bride;
You have made my heart beat faster with a single glance of your eyes,
With a single strand of your necklace.
How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride!
How much better is your love than wine,
And the fragrance of your oils
Than all kinds of spices!
Your lips, my bride, drip honey;
Honey and milk are under your tongue,
And the fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon (Song 4:9-11).

In previous chapters we have repeatedly observed in relevant scriptures the visually-oriented nature of male sexual desire, and this entire passage in the Song of Solomon is yet another affirmation. This shepherd’s eyes and physical heart are connected…one glance from her makes his pulse quicken.

His words, “How much better is your love than wine,” could perhaps be best interpreted as, “Making love with you has a wonderfully intoxicating effect on me.” He is not only enraptured by what he sees, but also by her enticing fragrance and the sweet taste of her lips. Regardless of whether we are reading about a real or imagined encounter, he has moved in closer to enjoy her fragrance and to kiss her. The verbal admiration of his foreplay, however, hasn’t ceased. Husbands, take note!

A garden locked is my sister, my bride,
A rock garden locked, a spring sealed up.
Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates
With choice fruits, henna with nard plants,
Nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon,
With all the trees of frankincense,
Myrrh and aloes, along with all the finest spices.
You are a garden spring,
A well of fresh water,
And streams flowing from Lebanon” (Song 4:12-15).

The New Living Translation, taking some linguistic liberty that would never be allowed by the New American Standard Version, translates the same passage:

You are my private garden, my treasure, my bride,
a secluded spring, a hidden fountain.
Your thighs shelter a paradise of pomegranates
with rare spices—
henna with nard,
nard and saffron,
fragrant calamus and cinnamon,
with all the trees of frankincense, myrrh, and aloes,
and every other lovely spice.
You are a garden fountain,
a well of fresh water
streaming down from Lebanon’s mountains.

I’m sure you are beginning to understand why I’m persuaded these lovers are married, and not just betrothed. Their level of intimacy, regardless of what might be implied by the imagery found in either translation, reveals a significant degree of familiarity and experience that could only be pure within marriage. The Shulammite bride is a “private garden,” reserved only for her lover, and one that is full of pleasures he has fully explored and enjoyed.

Building on her lover’s sensuous garden metaphor, she responds:

Awake, O north wind,
And come, wind of the south;
Make my garden breathe out fragrance,
Let its spices be wafted abroad.
May my beloved come into his garden
And eat its choice fruits! (Song 4:16).

At the metaphorical minimum, she invokes her alluring beauty to draw her lover to her to indulge in every sexual delight. Interpreted within the larger context, some see the allusions to eating in this passage not only to the lovers kissing, but to using their mouths in other forms of sexual expression, including oral sex (mouth-to-genital stimulation). That is a topic for a later chapter, but suffice it to say for now the Bible does not contain a single clear reference to oral sex, much less a reference that either approves or condemns it. The closest it comes to possibly alluding to it are the figurative images in the Song of Solomon of lovers eating each other’s fruit (see also Song 2:3).

Mutual Physical Possession

Notice that the Shulammite beauty invites her beloved into his garden rather than her garden, bringing deeper meaning to her later declaration, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” (Song 6:3). The New Testament teaches this same concept. Married couples have authority over each other’s bodies:

The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does (1 Cor. 7:4).

Couples who embrace those assertions in their fullest sense enjoy Edenic sex, and I’ll elaborate on that in the next chapter.

Closing this passage, and responding to her invitation to come into his garden and eat of its choice fruits, the shepherd declares:

I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride;
I have gathered my myrrh along with my balsam.
I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey;
I have drunk my wine and my milk (Song 5:1).

Again, she is his garden, and he has obviously already indulged in a variety of sexual pleasures with her, as indicated by the previously-mentioned metaphors regarding gathering myrrh, eating honey, and drinking milk and wine. Their lovemaking had been “sense-sational.” And, if any reader might be wondering if God approves of their mutual sexual intoxication, the final two sentences of the passage offer an unmistakable answer:

Eat, friends;
Drink and imbibe deeply, O lovers (Song 5:1b).

Sex is indeed for Christians, and it is especially enjoyed by those who are friends and lovers in the fullest sense. There is much more to learn from Solomon’s Song, so we’ll continue to explore its poetic passages in the next chapter. In the meantime, if you are married, don’t wait another minute to put this chapter into practice, and start reaping the beautiful benefits!

[1] Song 1:1, 5; 3:7, 9, 11; 8:11, 12

[2] Song 1:4, 12; 7:5

[3] Some commentators, attempting to overcome the problem of a biblical book that allegedly romanticizes polygamy, speculate that the Shulammite was Solomon’s very first wife whom he purely loved—at least until he began accumulating scores of other women. That, in my opinion, would romanticize pre-polygamy.

[4] Song 1:7-8; 2:16; 6:2-3

[5] Song 1:13, 14, 16; 2:3, 8, 9, 10, 16, 17; 4:16; 5:2, 4, 5, 6a, 6b, 8, 10, 16; 6:2, 3a, 3b; 7:9, 11, 13; 8:14

[6] Song 1:7; 3:1, 2, 3, 4

[7] Song 5:16

[8] Song 4:8, 9, 10, 11, 12; 5:1

[9] Song 4:9, 10, 12; 5:1, 2

[10] An alternate translation for “seal” here is signet, a device engraved with a reverse design for making an impression in order to identify ownership.

[11] Some questionable Christian commentators try to convince us that the Song of Solomon sanctions unmarried sex, but in light of the rest of the Bible, that is entirely implausible. It does certainly sanction God-given sexual desire, portrayed as being pure, beautiful and mysterious, like everything God created in the natural world, such as the passing of seasons, the falling of rain, the blossoming of flowers, and the songs of birds (Song 2:11-12).

[12] Of course, “long” and “short” are relative terms, so we should be cautious in inventing doctrinal hair codes based on this verse. Jesus seems to always be portrayed as having a hair length that almost touches His shoulders, but His hair is not nearly as long as women’s hair is often portrayed in the same era.

[13] The New Testament confirms this (see 1 Tim. 2:9-10).

The post Solomon’s Sex-Filled Song appeared first on David Servant.

PLEASE NOTE: This e-teaching is not appropriate for children, preadolescents, and many adolescents.

Among all the strange, sexual stories in the Old Testament, one stands out as being perhaps the most patriarchal. It involves a young, single woman, an orphan named Esther. She lived with her uncle (or cousin), Mordecai, among an exiled community of Jews in Susa, the capital of the ancient Persian Empire.[1]

Persia’s king, Ahasuerus, hosted a half-year party for his court and dignitaries that showcased “the riches of his royal glory and the splendor of his great majesty” (Est. 1:4). During the final seven days of the exhibition, all the citizens of Susa were invited to a lavish banquet at which “the heart of the king [became] merry with wine” (Est. 1:10). Like any drunk husband might do who possessed a trophy wife, Ahasuerus decided to exhibit his woman, so he ordered the royal eunuchs to summon beautiful Queen Vashti. She, however, was not a woman who appreciated being put on display before a hall of half-drunk men so they could gawk at her face and body as all their wives stoically pretended not to mind. So she refused to comply.

Her dissent enraged King Ahasuerus, so he consulted his royal advisors, all men, to ask what should be done to Queen Vashti. Worried that her insubordination might embolden all of Persia’s wives to disrespect their husbands, they quickly reached a consensus:

Queen Vashti has wronged not only the king but also all the princes, and all the peoples who are in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus. For the queen’s conduct will become known to all the women causing them to look with contempt on their husbands by saying, “King Ahasuerus commanded Queen Vashti to be brought in to his presence, but she did not come.” And this day the ladies of Persia and Media who have heard of the queen’s conduct will speak in the same way to all the king’s princes, and there will be plenty of contempt and anger. If it pleases the king, let a royal edict be issued by him and let it be written in the laws of Persia and Media so that it cannot be repealed, that Vashti should come no more into the presence of King Ahasuerus, and let the king give her royal position to another who is more worthy than she. And when the king’s edict which he shall make is heard throughout all his kingdom, great as it is, then all women will give honor to their husbands, great and small (Est.1:16-20).

As you probably noticed, women’s liberation had a rough start.

Queen Vashti was given no chance to repent or find even an ounce of mercy, and her husband exacted full revenge for his humiliation. Because she refused to come when summoned, she would never be permitted the privilege of being in his presence again. She would remain married but be functionally divorced from him. That would teach her, as well as any other wife “from India to Ethiopia” (Est. 1:1) who might be tempted to disrespect her husband’s drunken orders.

But it gets worse.

Although Vashti would be deprived of sex with her husband for the rest of her life, Ahasuerus had a harem of exclusive sexual partners. From that harem, he could have selected a new queen. However, with the advice of his all-male council, Ahasuerus decided to treat himself to a royal, sexual upgrade. They suggested that a search be conducted to find the most beautiful young virgins from all 127 provinces of his kingdom, and that they be added to his harem. He could then try out each one for a night, and the woman who pleased him the most could become his new queen. All the rest would remain available to him as members of his royal harem. It doesn’t get any more patriarchal than that.

Ahasuerus loved the idea.

Esther, as you probably know, was one of those selected to be a member of Ahasuerus’ humongous harem. First-time readers of the biblical book that bears Esther’s name might hope to learn that she, on her trial night with Ahasuerus, succeeded in strangling the sexual predator and unlocking the door that kept his harem captive, freeing the unfortunate women who served as his sporadic sex slaves. But no. Rather, they read how Esther, after fully submitting to the requisite year of cosmetic treatments, made her best effort to please the king. It would seem reasonable to also think that she, as a virgin being prepped for an entire year for the first sexual encounter of her life, received plenty of instruction on how to make Ahasuerus happy.

Esther apparently was not only beautiful, but also a good learner, distinguishing herself above the rest of the other women on her special night. Ahasuerus consequently selected her as his new queen. And although God is never once mentioned in the book of Esther, there is no hiding His providential hand, and readers soon realize He exalted Esther to ultimately save all the Jews in Persia from genocide. Ever since, Jews have annually celebrated those events, remembering Esther during the Feast of Purim.

A Marriage Made in Prison

Though casual readers might imagine how romantic it was for Esther, a lowly commoner, to be chosen by a noble king to be his prized queen, they should concede that Esther: (1) knew she had been selected, not for her personhood, but because of her beauty and sexual skill, (2) apparently didn’t regularly sleep with the king and at least once didn’t even see him for 30 days, (3) was deathly afraid to enter his presence or risk arousing his anger, knowing how temperamental he was and that he’d banished his previous wife because she didn’t comply with a degrading, drunken order, and (4) sexually shared him with perhaps hundreds of concubines (Est. 2:12-17, 4:10-11). And that is how it would always be. She would be his sexual playmate for as long as she could hold his interest. Narcissistic Ahasuerus robbed Esther, and scores of women like her, of all the blessings of a monogamous marriage.

So, let’s be honest. Esther didn’t have an enviable marriage. I can’t imagine any self-respecting woman wanting to trade places with her.

Are there any redeeming lessons that single Christians can learn from Esther’s story? Yes, and the first one, if you are female, is to avoid at all costs men like Ahasuerus. If you are male, the lesson is to avoid being anything like Ahasuerus.

Although all males, ancient and modern, share in Ahasuerus’ visually-oriented sexual nature, thankfully not all of them view women solely as collectable sexual objects. Godly single Christian men view single Christian women as sisters in Christ, daughters of God, and as “fellow heirs of the grace of life” (1 Pet. 3:7). Although such a proper view doesn’t eliminate biological physical attraction, it does result in a respect that tends to keep sexual desire in check.

Later in this chapter, we’ll consider “best sexual practices” for dating/courting Christians. First, however, let’s talk about premarital precautions that can be taken to avoid a prison marriage.

A Strategic Plan

Like many ancient marriages, Esther had no say in selecting her spouse. Her polygamous concubinage/marriage was essentially arranged by a government bureaucrat. Most modern single women (and men) are glad that their marital fate is not in government hands, but that they have the right to make their own decisions. That being said, choosing a compatible, lifetime mate is a daunting task. Imagine the precaution you would take if, when purchasing an automobile, you knew you would be required to drive it for the rest of your life. You would probably do a lot of research and talk to other people who had already purchased cars. You would take your time. You might even buy a book titled, Buyer Beware! subtitled, Proven, Safe Strategies to Guarantee You Get the Right Vehicle and Avoid a Lifetime of Mechanical Misery. The first chapter in such a book might be something like, “Love that Body? Imagine Rust and Dents.”

The decision who to marry is certainly one of the most consequential decisions of one’s life, and so, as they often say at weddings, “Marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly.” Perhaps you’ve heard the quip, “I thought I’d found Mr. Right, but it wasn’t until after we were married that I discovered he was “Mr. Always Right.” That’s funny; but it’s not funny to those who feel trapped in marriages that are characterized by constant conflict and disharmony. Although some conflicted couples work out their differences to enjoy eventual marital bliss, some suffer through the hell of divorce and its aftermath, while others “settle out of court” for a tenuous truce and a lifetime of marital mediocrity. If you remember anything from this chapter, remember this: Marriage doesn’t change a person’s character. Suffice it to say, better to be single than mismarried, or worse, wedded and at war.

All that being so, premarital precaution is wise. A strategic plan is certainly in order.

I would suggest that Christian singles first assess their own desire and readiness for marriage. Age and personal maturity should be taken into consideration, ideally with the counsel of parents and trusted friends. Successful marriage isn’t attained by simply “finding the right person.” It starts with “being the right person.”

Incidentally, there is nothing wrong with not wanting to be married. The apostle Paul wrote in favor of singleness, as it allows undistracted devotion to the Lord (see 1 Cor. 7:7-35). In fact, Paul said that God gives some a gift to that end. Don’t be ashamed if you have that gift!

Those who do not desire to be married, or who are not of sufficient age or personal maturity, would be wise to avoid any dating and should limit social interaction with members of the opposite sex to group settings. One-on-one dating should be reserved for those who desire marriage and are of sufficient age and personal maturity to be married. Additionally, such single people should not date anyone whom they have already determined is not a potential marriage partner, otherwise they risk misleading and emotionally harming another person, violating the Golden Rule. Honesty is always the best policy. (And you can see that I’m advocating courting over dating.)

Next, I would suggest that those who are ready to court pray with faith that God would guide them in the discovery and selection of a compatible life-long mate.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He will make your paths straight (Prov. 3:5-6).

Then it would be wise for those who are trusting the Lord to “narrow the field” by determining the basic criteria that must be met by anyone whom they court. Obviously, one such criterion would be a commitment to Jesus Christ. If you want to marry a Christian, there is no sense courting non-Christians. Besides, if you marry a nonbeliever, you are guaranteed to have trouble with your new father-in-law, the devil.

Next, I would advise those who are narrowing the field to take advantage of dating websites that allow them to input information about themselves as well as essential criteria for those with whom they will be matched. That can be a good way to speed up the process of narrowing the field, and hopefully it will result in some excellent matches with persons with whom they can communicate back and forth in writing via the dating website. By such means they can further explore compatibility and determine if they should, at some point in time, meet face to face to continue getting to know one another.

Obviously, if incompatibility is discovered, it would be easier to discontinue a relationship while it is still only in the stage of written communication. For that reason, I recommend not hurriedly meeting face to face. And although rejecting someone is difficult and being rejected hurts, “breaking up” is better than divorce. Again, honesty is always the best policy.

I should also add that any rejected person who threatens suicide or revenge sends the sure sign that he/she has not reached a place of personal maturity to be ready for courting, much less marriage. Those who court must accept the risk of rejection, and when/if they are rejected, they should do their best to take it in stride, remembering that, as many of our mothers told us, “There’s a whole lot of fish in the ocean.”

Finally, speaking of mothers, I would advise that such single people solicit the advice of their parents and/or trusted Christian friends during the entire process. It certainly can’t hurt to have some loving, outside evaluation and input.

My wife and I, who have been happily married for 42 years, have two daughters and a son. Both of our daughters followed the courting process I’ve just described, and both found wonderful husbands who also turned out to be fantastic fathers and sons-in-law. Our son followed the above process to a degree, skipping the step of a dating website, but God has also been very good to him. He found a gem of a wife in Burma during a mission trip and got to know her over a period of months from a distance of 8,000 miles. She, too, has proven to be a wonderful mother and daughter-in-law. As I’m writing this, we are all enjoying our annual all-family vacation with them and our 11 grandchildren—who are all being homeschooled by their parents. It pays to follow God’s wisdom.

Relationship Risk Management 101

If there is one lesson that can be applied to any prospective human relationship, whether it be a friendship, business relationship, or marriage, it is this: You can generally predict peoples’ future by looking at their past. That is what banks do when they determine to whom they should lend money. A potential borrower’s credit history reveals to lenders the likelihood of them repaying. People who defaulted on past loans will probably default on future loans. Again, past behavior foretells future behavior.

So, if a potential friend, employee, employer, or spouse has a consistent history of broken and failed relationships, there is a likelihood that any relationship you develop with that person will also end up broken or failed. Of course, people can and do at times change for the better, but alleged changes need to be consistently validated over time to mitigate risk. Don’t be fooled by any potential spouse who promises to change some undesirable behavior on the condition of marriage!

A man who has had a string of sexual encounters with multiple women before marriage is not likely to break that string after marriage. A man who regularly indulges in porn before marriage will likely indulge in porn after marriage. A man who mistreats his mother or biological sisters will probably mistreat his future wife. So the wise woman will fully investigate! The best time to prevent divorce is before marriage.

Of course, all of this also applies to men who are considering potential future wives. How she treats others is eventually how she will treat you. Don’t dream that you are somehow the exception to the rule.

The Vetting Process

A thorough investigation of a potential mate requires sufficient time and effort. In cultures that practice arranged marriages, all such investigation is done by parents. They do so from the time their children are born, and they never stop appraising other local families and their children, always on the lookout for good potential future mates for their children.

Such parents know that children are products of their family environments, so their search for good future spouses for their children is narrowed to those from respected families. They don’t want their children to marry someone whose parents set a bad example of marriage before them as they were growing up. They also know that other parents are watching their family, which provides a motivation for them to maintain community respect and raise honorable children. All of that social monitoring has a positive moral effect on society, resulting in benefits that have been lost to modern cultures that practice “love marriage.”

All of that is to say to single people: You can’t investigate a potential future spouse too thoroughly, learning all you can about their background in order to assess what it would be like to live with them for the rest of your life. Discovering all you can about their values, character and personality, parents, siblings, friends, past boyfriends/girlfriends, associates and adversaries, upbringing, past experiences (both positive and negative), future hopes, greatest strengths and weaknesses will serve you well in determining the likelihood of wedded bliss, marital misery, or something in between.

Balancing this, keep in mind that negative life experiences can, and often do, have positive effects. Suffering can make one bitter or better—it all depends on how one reacts to it. Some people who grow up in dysfunctional families, for example, end up being exemplary spouses and parents because their negative experiences birthed within them an inner resolve to ultimately possess something superior.

If, during the investigatory phase, the relationship continues in a positive direction, at some point in your conversations, it is good for both parties to verbalize their true feelings for each other. Both can express what makes the other so attractive as a potential spouse as well as acknowledge any hesitancies or suggest any “advanced topics” for discussion. Again, honesty is the best policy. In my experience as a former pastor and requisite marriage counselor, I found that most marital problems stemmed from disagreements about children, money and sex. So those categories would make for wise discussion topics. Here are a few questions couples should be asking each other who have progressed in their relationship to the point of seriously considered engagement:

If we were to marry:

—   Would you want to have children? If yes, how many and how soon?

—   What is your philosophy of raising children? How should they be disciplined when disobedient? Should they be given chores? Should they have cell phones?

—   Would you want our children to attend public school, private Christian school, or that they be home schooled?

—   What would be your financial expectations? Would both of us pursue careers? Or would one of us be the breadwinner and the other stay home to raise children, at least while they were young?

—   What is your conviction regarding debt? What should or should we not incur debt to own? What would be your maximum debt threshold? Would you be bringing debt into our marriage?

—   Where would you want to live? Do you prefer urban, suburban, or rural living?

—   Do you have any sexual experience with another person? If “yes,” how do you feel about it now?

—   How important do you believe sex is in marriage? How knowledgeable are you about sex? Are you comfortable talking about it?

—   Do you think you may have any negative feelings or hang ups regarding sex? Do you think your parents had a healthy sex life? Do you think that they instilled in you a healthy attitude toward it?

Christian singles, of course, will want to know the conversion stories and spiritual commitment of any person they court. A genuine repentance and new birth can mitigate or even eradicate negative elements of a person’s past or personality that might otherwise be of legitimate concern. But has there been a genuine change? Does the allegedly born-again potential future spouse recognize what was wrong before, and has his or her spiritual transformation been validated by a consistent, transformed life?

I’m not suggesting that the goal is to marry someone who is perfect, because there are no such people. I am suggesting, however, that before you agree to marry someone, you know their strengths and weaknesses. Your “I do” should be a well-informed decision. Back in the days when I served as a pastor, I always asked couples who requested that I perform their weddings, “Have you been dating long enough to have seen the other person’s ‘dark side’?” Unless they answered in the affirmative, I told them to come back in six months.

Sexual Compatibility

Ahasuerus, of course, wasn’t taking any risk regarding his “marriage” to Esther. If things didn’t work out, he could ban her just as easily as he did his previous wife. Remember, his sole vetting criteria for Esther was essentially a sexual performance test, and even that was superficial, as he had scores of exclusive backup sexual partners.

Should couples considering marriage have sex to determine if they are sexually compatible, as is sometimes advocated? No. If one of you is male and the other is female, you are sexually compatible. If you do marry, chances are good that, with regular practice, you’ll become increasingly more compatible than you found yourself to be on your wedding night.

Statistics show that couples who engage in premarital sex are not less likely, but more likely, to end up divorced. Why is that? Simply because couples who engage in premarital sex reveal flaws in their character that they carry into every other aspect of their marriage. Not only do they reveal a lack of self-control, respect for their partner, and commitment to Christ, but they also display a degree of selfishness, all of which will be manifest in other ways within their marriage.

Additionally, premarital sex can easily cloud one’s judgment as he/she considers a prospective mate. It can mask your mind to character flaws you would otherwise notice, flaws that will later cause misery. They say “love is blind.” Premarital sex can make you deaf, dumb and blind.

The person who attempts to engage sexually on some level, or who sends signals of wanting to engage sexually on some level, reveals a character flaw that should be a warning to anyone he or she is dating/courting. If he or she is willing to engage sexually with someone who potentially could be another person’s future spouse, what does that suggest might occur after marriage? Is such a person not more likely to be unfaithful after marriage, either via an affair or porn? Will marriage somehow improve their character? Don’t fool yourself into thinking it will.

If you’ve read the previous eight chapters you are hopefully convinced that sexual intercourse, according to God’s standards, is reserved exclusively for marriage. Unmarried people who engage in sex commit the sin of fornication. Scripture reminds us:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10; emphasis added).

Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge (Heb. 13:4; emphasis added).

Those are solemn warnings.

Dating and courting couples often fool themselves that sex with each other is OK because “We’re really in love, and it looks like we’re headed towards marriage.”

But God did not design sex for people who think they are headed towards marriage, but for people who are married. Until you are married, you don’t have sexual rights to your boyfriend/girlfriend/fiancé/fiancée. In fact, your boyfriend/girlfriend/fiancé/fiancée may be someone else’s future spouse! You don’t know for sure otherwise until you are married. In one sense, that makes fornication a form of potential adultery.

Remember, God’s sexual standards are an expression of His love. He’s not trying to restrict our enjoyment of sex, or of life. Rather, He’s trying to enhance our enjoyment of both. The best sex occurs between two people who love each other enough to reserve their sexual gifts exclusively for each other, and for life. Sex is an expression of their unique love for each other. Their unions produce treasured children who grow up in a secure family, a garden of love.

Contrast that with the selfishness of single people who entice someone else to experience sex’s deep psychological bonding, even though it is often followed by a rejection (“breaking up”) that is somewhat comparable to a divorce. The habitual fornicator selfishly “marries” to then “divorce.”

Let’s be honest. Fornication is pure selfishness. It is so selfish it could almost be described as consensual rape. Both parties use each other. Both potentially violate another person’s future spouse.

Fornicators also risk being partners in unplanned pregnancies that cause innocent children to suffer on some level, perhaps through a fatherless childhood or by being brutally murdered in their mother’s womb through abortion.

According to the apostle Paul, Christian fornicators sin against their own bodies, because their bodies are members of Christ’s body, are temples of the Holy Spirit, have been purchased by God, and will one day be gloriously resurrected:

Yet the body is not for immorality [porneia], but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, “The two shall become one flesh.” But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee immorality [porneia]. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral [porneuo] man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body (1 Cor. 6:13b-20).

All of this is to say that single Christians should avoid fornication at all costs. It would be, to borrow some words from Jesus that we considered in the previous chapter, worth plucking out your eye or cutting off your hand to avoid.

Staying Away from Slippery Creek Banks

How can single Christians remain sexually pure, especially if they are in the process of falling in love?

The answer to that important question is found in the passage we just read in 1 Corinthians. Paul wrote, “Flee immorality” (1 Cor. 6:18). That means to get away from it as fast as you can whenever the temptation crops up. It is only when you play along the slippery banks of the creek that you are likely to fall in. So, stay away from those slippery creek banks!

A few such “slippery creek banks” are parties, bars and clubs that are standard “pick-up spots” for “one-night stands” with strangers. No genuine, born-again, Spirit-indwelt Christians have a desire to attend such places: [2]

For the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties and abominable idolatries. In all this, they are surprised that you do not run with them into the same excesses of dissipation, and they malign you; but they will give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead (1 Pet. 4:3-5).

If you do enjoy indulging in such environments, that is a good sign that you have not been born again. You may be religious, your parents might be born again, or you may have given mental acknowledgement of some theological facts. But you really don’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God before whom you will one day stand in judgment. His Holy Spirit is not living in you.

The remedy for that is to repent of your sins and truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Then you will actually be born again, God’s Holy Spirit will come to reside in you, and your highest aspiration in life will be to please your Lord, Jesus. Obedience to Jesus is the mark of the true, born-again Christian:

If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him (1 John 2:29).

No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother (1 John 3:9-10).

Although being born again results in a transformed life, it does not affect basic, biological sexual desire. So the potential to sin sexually still exists. Christians must remain on guard against sexual temptation. Paul wrote, “Make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts [desires]” (Rom. 13:14). That is another way of saying, “Stay away from slippery creek banks.”

Courting Christians should not allow themselves to be together in environments where they might be tempted to compromise. Dates and meetings should take place in public places. Spending time together, for example, at one or the other’s residence when there is no one else at home is an invitation to temptation. Parking in a car together in a remote or secluded place is the same. So is hiking together to a secluded location.

If either party suggests doing something together that could open the door to sexual temptation, a simple reply of, “I would love to, but let’s try that somewhere else where there’s no danger of compromise” should not be offensive, but perhaps even be flattering. It sends the message, “I’m physically attracted to you, but we’re not married, and because I respect you and love God, I want to take precaution.”

How Far Can We Go?

Obviously, God designed sex to be progressive. Married couples engage in “foreplay” that consists of non-penetrative sexual activities, such as kissing and caressing, that ultimately lead to intercourse. Non-progressive sex is generally perceived as rape.

When courting couples engage in non-penetrative sexual activities, they put themselves on a slippery slope, and risk hindering their judgment and resistance to temptation. So it is best to keep away from any sexual activity that is designed by God to lead to intercourse. Both men and women have built-in physical monitors by which they can gauge if they are doing something that is designed by God as foreplay. When one’s genitals engorge, one is doing something that is designed to lead to intercourse. And if one is not married or engaged to the person with whom one is experiencing physical preparation for intercourse, one may be doing it with someone else’s future spouse. So again, I suggest that courting couples avoid anything sexual prior to engagement, and after engagement, restraining themselves to light and limited kissing (if just to practice for their public wedding kiss!).[3]

I realize that most people, and even professing Christians, would laugh at the degree of non-marital sexual abstinence I’m advocating. On the other hand, I know of a few Christian couples whose first kiss was in front of an invited crowd and when their pastor said, “You may kiss your bride!” Those admirable couples honored each other before marriage, laying a foundation of honor upon which their marriage could be built. They avoided cheapening their future sexual relationship as well as suffering the guilt that always accompanies premarital sex. They knew that they had decades ahead of future sexual enjoyment together, so there was no need to rush into sex.

When you think about the words, “You may kiss your bride,” spoken near the close of every wedding ceremony, they seem to imply the bridegroom did not have the right to kiss his bride until after the exchange of vows and rings. But once the two have solemnly pledged to love each other as husband and wife until death, then do they have sexual rights to each other. Sadly, in the context of licentious modern culture, wedding officiants might be more honest to say, “It’s meaningless, but go ahead and kiss the woman with whom you’ve already had sex numerous times. Let’s hope that neither of you cheat on each other from this point onward, even though all your premarital sex was potentially done with someone else’s future spouse. You certainly have not laid a foundation of trust.”

Once a courting couple has arrived at the decision to marry, it is easier for them to justify yielding to sexual temptation. But engagements can be broken, and they sometimes are (and a broken engagement is preferable to a marital divorce). Wise engaged couples, especially those who are struggling with temptation, don’t prolong their engagement period. Long engagement periods can be a slippery slope.

The Wedding Night and First Year

The best marital sex starts with two virgins. Sexual amateurs don’t have to worry about being compared to former lovers or about their comparative sexual knowledge and experience. They don’t have to pretend. If they both adopt an attitude of “Let’s have fun, openly communicate, and learn together for the rest of our lives,” they are on a path of marital bliss.

What many Christian couples fail to grasp on their wedding day is that they are just starting a sexual journey that will last a lifetime. They often set unrealistic expectations for their first love-making session, not yet realizing that God designed that their sexual skills be acquired over years of communication and practice. The wedding night is just the first step of a thousand-mile journey. Even those who begin marriage with some sexual experience may not initially realize that every man and woman is different to some degree, and not only will they slowly discover what makes their special lover happy, they will surprisingly discover more of what makes themselves happy. So there is no hurry.

Just-married couples have a lifetime of lovemaking ahead of them that will include thousands of opportunities to learn and improve. If the first time is a bit clumsy and unsuccessful on some level, the thing to do is enjoy every moment, laugh, talk, and keep practicing and learning. There is no rule for what must be achieved on the wedding night, and many married couples, in retrospect, realize it would have been better to extend over weeks what they attempted to achieve the first night. Related to that, here’s an interesting commandment from the Mosaic Law:

When a man takes a new wife, he shall not go out with the army, nor be charged with any duty; he shall be free at home one year and shall give happiness to his wife whom he has taken (Deut. 24:5).

It’s so nice to read such a non-patriarchal passage in the Old Testament. Newlywed husbands were commanded to work on “giving happiness” to their wives during their first year of marriage. There are a lot of ways to make one’s wife happy, and some of them are sexual. All of them require understanding of what makes wives happy, so communication on the part of husbands and wives is necessary. Newlyweds should not be ashamed to discuss their sex lives in detail with each other (but with no one else). On the contrary, a good sexual relationship depends on good communication.

There will likely be at least 100 (and hopefully many more) sexual learning sessions during the first year of marriage. Again, there is no hurry. Wise husbands work on giving their wives happiness, not for just the first year, but for the rest of their lives. More about that in future chapters! — David

[1] In 1901 archeologists found among the ruins of Susa, in modern Iran, the original stela bearing the Code of Hammurabi (mentioned in Chapter 2 of this book).

[2] The exception would be if true Christians are led to such places to spread the gospel to the unsaved.

[3] The modern idea that one is technically a virgin as long as one has abstained from penis-in-vagina sex, even though one has engaged in mutual masturbation or oral sex, is ludicrous in light of Jesus’ words, “everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matt. 5:28). In a sense, one loses one’s virginity in God’s eyes with the first act of lust, before there is any physical contact.

The post The Dating/Courting Christian: How Far Can We Go? appeared first on David Servant.

PLEASE NOTE: This e-teaching is not appropriate for children, preadolescents, and many adolescents.

In spite of the Bible’s complete silence on the subject of masturbation, some Bible believers have been very vocal, and very negative, about it. For example, Victorian-era physician John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of Corn Flakes and a devoted Seventh Day Adventist, wrote a 600-page book in 1877 titled, Plain Facts about Sexual Life.[1] In it he devoted three entire chapters to the causes, consequences and cures of masturbation, which he termed self-abuse, self-pollution and a secret vice. Kellogg claimed that masturbation was “the most dangerous of all sexual abuses because [it is] the most extensively practiced… nearly universal,” and warned:

It may be begun in earliest infancy, and may continue through life. Even though no warning may have been given, the transgressor seems to know, instinctively, that he is committing a great wrong, for he carefully hides his practice from observation. In solitude he pollutes himself, and with his own hand blights all his prospects for both this world and the next…

In Kellogg’s view, even an innocent baby—who like most babies discovers that touching his or her genitals feels pleasurable—could commit the damning sin of masturbation. One alleged proof in Kellogg’s mind of masturbation’s great wrongness is that the masturbator “carefully hides his practice from observation.” I wonder if Dr. Kellogg ever noticed that married couples do the same regarding sex? Or that most everyone seeks privacy when they relieve themselves? Is that because married couples think that marital sex is wrong, or that everyone believes urination is immoral? Is it not true that even the most immodest people still maintain some sense of modesty regarding their genitals?[2]

Dr. Kellogg was convinced that many illnesses were due to masturbation, including cancer of the womb, urinary diseases, impotence, epilepsy, dimness of vision, and “mental and physical debility.” How he concluded that masturbation could be responsible for so many physical maladies that marital sex would not similarly cause is a mystery. But to Dr. Kellogg, masturbation could literally drive people out of their minds:

In the insane asylums of the country may be seen hundreds of these poor victims in all stages of physical and mental demoralization.

I can’t help but wonder if the real reason such people lost their sanity was because of the enormous weight of guilt that people like Dr. Kellogg—who was certainly not a lone voice railing against masturbation during the Victorian age—saddled upon them. Can you imagine, for example, what would happen to people psychologically if they became convinced that eating food was immoral and a damning sin?

Dr. Kellogg Versus the Bible on Nocturnal Emissions

Dr. Kellogg even categorized male nocturnal emissions, “wet dreams,” as one of the consequent diseases of masturbation:

The masturbator knows nothing of this disease [nocturnal emissions] so long as he continues his vile practice; but when he resolves to reform, and ceases to defile himself voluntarily, he is astonished and disgusted to find that the same filthy pollutions occur during sleep without his voluntary participation. He now begins to see something of the ruin he has wrought. The same nightly loss continues, sometimes being repeated several times in a single night, to his infinite mortification and chagrin. He hopes the difficulty will subside of itself, but his hope is vain; unless properly treated, it will probably continue until the ruin which he voluntarily began is completed.

Had Dr. Kellogg read Leviticus 15:16-18 in the Mosaic Law, perhaps he would have moderated his view. There God said:

Now if a man has a seminal emission, he shall bathe all his body in water and be unclean until evening. As for any garment or any leather on which there is seminal emission, it shall be washed with water and be unclean until evening. If a man lies with a woman so that there is a seminal emission, they shall both bathe in water and be unclean until evening (Lev. 15:16-18).

Note that the second instance mentioned in this passage of a man having a seminal emission is framed within sexual intercourse, which clearly marks the first instance as occurring apart from sexual intercourse, and so it must refer to an individual occurrence, either through masturbation or nocturnal emission. Because neither is specifically mentioned or differentiated, it would seem safe to conclude that both are implied.

Again, note that God simply said in this passage, “If a man has a seminal emission” without elaborating on any causes. Had He wanted to, He could have specifically stipulated nocturnal emissions, as He did, for example, in Deuteronomy 23:9-11.[3] Had He done that, no one would have concluded He was referring to what might include masturbation. They would have known He was only referring to “wet dreams.” (Incidentally, nocturnal orgasms often include sexual dreams, which makes them not too different from masturbation accompanied by sexual fantasy, although the former is done unconsciously, while the latter is done consciously.)[4]

In any case, if an Israelite man had a seminal emission, he was to bathe in water, and any garment or leather that the seminal emission touched was also to be washed in water. Both the man and the soiled garment remained unclean until sundown.

The man’s “uncleanness” was obviously ceremonial or hygienic rather than moral, because (1) an inanimate object—a soiled garment—also became “unclean,” just like the man, (2) the man’s uncleanness was only temporary, and he reverted back to a “clean” status at sundown, without any required repentance or atonement, and (3) his temporary uncleanness was the same temporary uncleanness experienced by any man or woman, presumably married, who engaged in sex that resulted in a seminal emission. Their unclean status clearly had nothing to do with God’s moral disapproval.

Moreover, the Mosaic Law mentions many acts that could result in one becoming “unclean until evening,” including touching the carcasses of certain insects or animals (Lev. 11:24-28), entering a quarantined house (Lev. 14:46), or obediently gathering the ashes of a sacrificial red heifer as prescribed in the Mosaic Law (Num. 19:1-10). Thus, it would be foolish to conclude that God’s “unclean” designation that was temporarily given to Israelite men who experienced seminal emissions was in any way indicative of His moral disapproval.

All of this is to say that, according to the Mosaic Law, and in contrast with Mr. Kellogg’s views, there is nothing to be ashamed of regarding “wet dreams,” experienced by both males and females, in themselves. They are a normal feature of human physiology—for some more than others—and particularly for men when there is no other release of their increasing accumulation of semen. If nocturnal orgasms include immoral sexual dreams, dreamers only bear guilt if they have been filling their minds with immoral thoughts when awake, as nighttime dreams often reflect daytime meditations. (Remember, porn is not your friend.)

Dr. Kellogg’s Cures

Kellogg devoted many pages of his book enumerating thirty-nine suspicious signs that could alert parents that their children were masturbating. They included “round shoulders and a stooping posture,” and an “extreme fondness for unnatural, hurtful and irritating foods” such as “salt, pepper, spices, cinnamon, cloves, vinegar, mustard, [and] horseradish.” He warned that “pimples on the face is also among the suspicious signs, especially when it appears upon the forehead,” and “biting the finger nails is a practice very common in girls addicted to this vice.” Masturbators might also have one or more warts “upon one or both the first two fingers of the hand, usually the right.”

Suspicious parents should secure positive proof of their children’s “debasing practice” by taking measures to catch them in the act. If caught, Kellogg recommended a number of habit-breaking remedies, including a restricted diet along with abstinence from smoking:

The use of stimulants of any kind is a fruitful cause of the vice. Tea and coffee have led thousands to perdition in this way. The influence of tobacco is so strongly shown in this direction that it is doubtful if there can be found a boy who has attained the age of puberty, and has acquired the habit of using tobacco, who is not also addicted to this vile practice. Candies, spices, cinnamon, cloves, peppermint, and all strong essences powerfully excite the genital organs, and lead to the same result.

If you’ve ever wondered why Corn Flakes are so bland, perhaps now you know.

Dr. Kellogg also recommended that parents employ other remedies, such as tying their children’s hands at bedtime, bandaging their genitals or enclosing them with patented strap-on cages, or having their sons’ foreskins surgically sewn in order to make erections impossible. Beyond those cures there was also electrical shock treatments and circumcision without anesthesia:

A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision…. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases. The soreness which continues for several weeks interrupts the practice [of masturbation], and if it had not previously become too firmly fixed, it may be forgotten and not resumed.

For female masturbators, one of Kellogg’s cures bordered on what today is referred to as “female genital mutilation”:

In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement, and preventing the recurrence of the practice in those whose will-power has become so weakened that the patient is unable to exercise entire self-control.

Carbolic acid (also known as phenol) is a corrosive poison that causes burning and numbness when it comes in contact with skin. It can result in superficial or deep burns. One can only wonder about the long-term physical, psychological and marital consequences of burning the genitals of masturbating young females with acid. Incidentally, Dr. Kellogg was not considered to be a quack in his day. His patients included president Taft, Amelia Earhart, George Bernard Shaw, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison.

A More Reasonable Recommendation

Thankfully, Dr. Kellogg’s Victorian views are no longer tormenting tens of thousands of his patients and readers, and more reasonable, biblical, and scientific voices have risen in his place. One of those voices belongs to Dr. James Dobson, who for decades has stood among American’s most prominent evangelical leaders. He is also a PhD psychologist, a prolific author of many best-selling books regarding family issues, and founder of the widely-respected ministries, Focus on the Family and Family Talk. In his book, Bringing Up Boys (which has sold over 2 million copies), Dr. Dobson answered a question from a parent who was suspicious that his 13-year-old son was masturbating:

Question: My thirteen-year-old son is in the full bloom of adolescence. I’m suspicious that he may be masturbating when he’s alone, but I don’t quite know how to approach him about it. Should I be concerned, and if so, what should I say to him?

Answer: I don’t think you should invade that private world at all unless there are unique circumstances that lead you to do so. I offer that advice while acknowledging that masturbation is a highly controversial subject and Christian leaders differ widely in their perspectives on it. I will answer your question but hope you understand that some Bible scholars and ministers will disagree emphatically with what I will say.

First, let’s consider masturbation from a medical perspective. We can say without fear of contradiction that there is no scientific evidence to indicate that this act is harmful to the body. Despite terrifying warnings given to young people historically, it does not cause blindness, weakness, mental retardation, or any other physical problem. If it did, the entire male population and about half of females would be blind, weak, simpleminded, and sick. Between 95 and 98 percent of all boys engage in this practice—and the rest have been known to lie. It is as close to being a universal behavior as is likely to occur. A lesser but still significant percentage of girls also engage in what was once called “self-gratification,” or worse, “self-abuse.”

As for the emotional consequences of masturbation, only four circumstances should give us cause for concern. The first is when it is associated with oppressive guilt from which the individual can’t escape. That guilt has the potential to do considerable psychological and spiritual damage. Boys and girls who labor under divine condemnation can gradually become convinced that even God couldn’t love them. They promise a thousand times with great sincerity never again to commit this “despicable” act. Then a week or two passes, or perhaps several months. Eventually, the hormonal pressure accumulates until nearly every waking moment reverberates with sexual desire. Finally, in a moment (and I do mean a moment) of weakness, it happens again. What then, dear friend? Tell me what a young person says to God after he or she has just broken the one thousandth solemn promise to Him? I am convinced that some teenagers have thrown over their faith because of their inability to please God on this point.

The second circumstance in which masturbation might have harmful implications is when it becomes extremely obsessive. That is more likely to occur when it has been understood by the individual to be “forbidden fruit.” I believe the best way to prevent that kind of obsessive response is for adults not to emphasize or condemn it. Regardless of what you do, you will not stop the practice of masturbation in your teenagers. That is a certainty. You’ll just drive it underground—or under covers. Nothing works as a “cure.” Cold showers, lots of exercise, many activities, and awesome threats are ineffective. Attempting to suppress this act is one campaign that is destined to fail—so why wage it?

The third situation around which we should be concerned is when the young person becomes addicted to pornographic material. The kind of obscenity available to teenagers today has the capacity to grab and hold a boy for the rest of his life. Parents will want to intervene if there is evidence that their son or daughter is heading down that well-worn path. I will discuss that danger in a subsequent chapter.

The fourth concern about masturbation refers not to adolescents but to us as adults. This habit has the capacity to follow us into marriage and become a substitution for healthy sexual relations between a husband and wife. This, I believe, is what the apostle Paul meant when he instructed us not to deprive or “defraud” one another as marital partners: “Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control” (1 Corinthians 7:5).

As for the spiritual implications of masturbation, I will have to defer to the theologians for a more definitive response. It is interesting to me, however, that Scripture does not address this subject except for a single reference in the Old Testament to a man named Onan. He interrupted sexual intercourse with his sister-in-law and allowed his semen to fall on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother, which was his “duty” (Genesis 38:8-9). Although that verse is often cited as evidence of God’s disapproval of masturbation, the context doesn’t seem to fit.

So, what should you as a father say to your thirteen-year-old son about this subject? My advice is to say nothing after puberty has occurred. You will only cause embarrassment and discomfort. For those who are younger, it would be wise to include the subject of masturbation in the “Preparing for Adolescence” conversation I have recommended on other occasions. I would suggest that parents talk to their twelve- or thirteen-year-old boys, especially, in the same general way my mother and father discussed this subject with me. We were riding in the car, and my dad said, “Jim, when I was a boy, I worried so much about masturbation. It really became a scary thing for me because I thought God was condemning me for what I couldn’t help. So I’m telling you now that I hope you don’t feel the need to engage in this act when you reach the teen years, but if you do, you shouldn’t be too concerned about it. I don’t believe it has much to do with your relationship with God.”

What a compassionate thing my father did for me that night in the car. He was a very conservative minister who never compromised his standards of morality to the day of his death. He stood like a rock for biblical principles and commandments. Yet he cared enough about me to lift from my shoulders the burden of guilt that nearly destroyed some of my friends in the church. This kind of “reasonable” faith taught to me by my parents is one of the primary reasons I never felt it necessary to rebel against parental authority or defy God.

Those are my views, for what they are worth. I know my recommendations will be inflammatory to some people. If you are one of them, please forgive me. I can only offer the best advice of which I’m capable. I pray that in this instance, I am right.

Dr. Kellogg and Dr. Dobson certainly represent the broad, historic spectrum of opinion regarding masturbation within Christian circles. That spectrum may not be quite as broad among today’s Christians, but there is still a wide divergence of perspectives. There are still those, like Dr. Kellogg, who believe that masturbation is a damning sin. Some teach that, because masturbation always involves lust, and because Jesus equated lust with heart-adultery, and because Paul warned that no adulterer will inherit God’s kingdom, all who masturbate are hell-bound adulterers.

Masturbation Apart from Lust?

The primary reason masturbation is condemned within Christian circles is its association with lust. In contrast to that view, as I wrote in the previous chapter, masturbation can be done without any sexual imaginations, although that is probably rare, at least among men. Masturbation can also be done without lust by married persons who imagine their spouse (but, as Dr. Dobson wrote, masturbation that deprives one’s spouse of sex is a marital violation). Some suggest that widows and widowers would not be guilty of lust to recall sexual encounters with their former spouses (as long as they have not remarried).

It is also suggested by some that masturbation can be done without lust by thinking of an imaginary future spouse, rather than an actual person. The late Dr. Richard Dobbins, a licensed Christian psychologist, prolific author of numerous books on family topics, and founder of Emerge Counseling Ministries, espoused that view. In his book, Teaching Your Children the Truth About Sex, in a chapter titled, “Avoiding Traps with the Opposite Sex,” he wrote:

Explain to your son that powerful neurochemicals deeply imprint in his brain the pornographic images he sees. Over time, those sensual memories will define his sexual appetites and seriously impair his ability to enjoy a healthy sex life with his wife. Be sure your teen knows that the pornographic industry is not dedicated to helping him become a sexually healthy man. The pornographer’s goal is to get rich by making your son sexually dependent on their products.

At the same time you are warning your teens about pornography and chat rooms, reassure them that their sexual urges are normal and healthy. Let them know that learning to manage a strong sex drive for several years is a challenge every young person has to face in becoming an adult. Express your confidence in their ability to do it.

Assure them that if they are thinking about making love to their future spouse when they are taking care of their own sexual needs, they have done nothing morally wrong. Teach them to view caring for their own sexual needs as a part of their personal grooming, like taking a shower, shampooing their hair, or using deodorant. Taking care of their own needs will relieve sexual tensions and keep them from imposing their sex needs on others until they are married.

Keep on telling them what you have been telling them since they were small children. Repetition is an important method of teaching. Remind them that there is nothing morally wrong about having pleasant feelings in their genitals. After all, this is God’s way of helping them anticipate what they have to look forward to in marriage.

By confining their sexual fantasies to marriage, your teens are learning to be true to the spouse they will eventually marry years before they know who that person will be. They are also building their anticipation of a healthy and exciting sex life and marriage. Assure them that if they save themselves for each other, sex in marriage will feel much better and be far more emotionally satisfying than fantasizing about it before marriage.

In the chapter that follows, titled “Discussing Masturbation and Fantasy,” Dobbins wrote:

Recent surveys in the United States indicate that about 55 percent of all thirteen-year-olds (both boys and girls) masturbate. By the time they reach age fifteen, the figure rises to more than 80 percent. About 95% of adult men and 65% of adult women practice masturbation. Many young people are confused about this practice, and some are troubled by it. So you need to talk to your teens about masturbation.

Even though the word masturbation is not in the Bible, it is a common source of guilt for people, especially for young people. Although the practice is not mentioned in the Bible, the Scriptures clearly teach that fantasizing about having sex with someone to whom you are not married is sinful (Matthew 5:28). Since only a small percentage of young people report masturbating without fantasies, your teenager’s sexual fantasies while masturbating are a cause of serious spiritual concern. Why?

God created sexual orgasm to be one of the most powerful pleasures a human being experiences. He designed your brain to form a neurochemical link between the pleasure of sexual orgasm and the fantasy you used to bring you to that level of sexual excitement. This is why the source of sexual excitement a person uses to bring himself to orgasm becomes such a critical spiritual issue. The source of sexual excitement becomes linked with the experience of sexual excitement. Explain this to your teens.

Help your teenagers to understand that sexual fantasy is a normal part of puberty. Until your children are engaged to be married, their sexual fantasies should be about marriage in general. Suppose your son asks you, “I’m really in love with Suzie. Can I fantasize about Suzie when I masturbate?”

Obviously, the answer is, “No.” After all, if your son is a typical fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boy, there are likely to be many Suzies before God brings into his life the woman he is to marry. Help him see that using a specific person as the focus of his sexual fantasy while he is masturbating is an abuse of that person.

However, he can fantasize about how much better his wife will be able to make him feel than he can make himself feel. At the same time, he can reinforce his determination to save himself for her.

Teach your sons to understand that when they want to experience sexual orgasm, their brains will automatically conjure up the fantasies they have learned can provide this experience for them. If these fantasies are about how good it will feel to have sex with their wife when they are married, then there is nothing morally wrong with it. If their orgasmic skills have been learned through the years by pairing orgasm with fantasies of making love to their future spouse, then they will bring into marriage orgasmic skills trained to respond to the body of their spouse.

Once your children are engaged, their fantasies can become personal. On their wedding night their spouse’s body will become their body, and their body will become their spouse’s body (1 Cor. 7:4). Then what both of them have been dreaming and fantasizing about for years can be celebrated freely without the risk of complicating each other’s life by bringing into their marriage a history of sexually transmitted diseases or pornographic habits.

Once a man and a woman are married, they will both want to train their minds to make each other the source of all their future fantasizing. As a young person, your son could only think abstractly about his future spouse when he is fantasizing about marriage. Now he can place the image of his wife as the source of his fantasies. He can remember actual love-making events with his wife, or imagine those he would like to have. But once married, the husband’s mind should be restricted to sexual thoughts about his wife, and the wife’s mind should be restricted to sexual thoughts about her husband.

When other fantasies are used, a man will bring into his marriage a need for the stimulus he has learned to depend upon for helping him reach this level of sexual excitement. So, while he is making love to his spouse, his fantasies will not be with her. They will be fixed on whatever he has trained his mind to need for sexual excitement. Any intuitive wife will realize that although her husband is physically present when they are making love, he seems to be emotionally removed from what is going on…

At the risk of being too repetitive, have the following conversation with your teenager.

Remember, when you are pleasuring yourself, it is very important that your thoughts are on marriage. If you use pornography to stimulate your sexual excitement, then you will carry the need for pornography into your marriage. Sooner or later, your wife will discover this. You will feel embarrassed and humiliated. She will feel angry and inadequate.

So, when you are pleasuring yourself, think about your future marriage. Realize that when God brings His woman for you into your life, sex with her will make you feel better than you have ever been able to make yourself feel. When you are married to her, she will love you deeply and get to know your body well enough to give you the pleasure God has designed for you to experience. Her body will fulfill your fantasies, and sexual orgasm will bond you to her.

Your fantasies of her before you meet her will only add to the intensity of that bond. By restricting your sexual fantasies to her and keeping yourself for her you won’t be thinking about what sex was like with that girl or that girl when you are making love to your wife. You won’t be using the fantasy of another woman’s body to satisfy the lust you have for pleasure. The fantasies that have sexually excited you and brought you to orgasm have always been of the wife God would eventually bring into your life. Being true to her before you know her will make it easier for you to be true to her after she is yours.

In a later chapter of Dr. Dobbin’s book in which he addresses questions asked by parents, I found the following question and answer interesting:

Q. If a person engages in self-pleasure without fantasy or pornography, with whom does that person bond?

A. Himself or herself. I have referred to this as narcissistic masturbation. Such a person usually carries into marriage the need for a secret life of masturbation that is highly likely to become disturbing for his or her spouse when it is discovered. So, why do that? It’s unnecessary in the first place. Why not just fantasize about being married? Be a good steward of your sexuality before you’re married. It will help you be loyal to your spouse.

Obviously, Dr. Dobbins believed that masturbation could serve as a preventative against sexual sin and that sexually fantasizing about an imaginary future spouse does not constitute lust by an unmarried person. Moreover, he believed that masturbation that is unaccompanied by such a sexual fantasy is perverse due to its complete self-focus.

Jesus on Lust

So what about Jesus’ well-known words from the Sermon on the Mount regarding lust being equivalent to adultery of the heart? What application do they have to this discussion?

We’ve already acknowledged that imagining a sexual encounter is not lustful if the object of one’s imagination is one’s spouse. One can’t lust after one’s spouse any more than one can commit adultery with one’s spouse. So there is at least one exception to Jesus’ decree that “everyone who looks at a woman with lust [or literally, desire] for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Although all husbands are a subset of “everyone” and all wives are women, married people cannot commit adultery with each other or sinfully desire each other.

So, are there any other exceptions? Would fantasizing about one’s future, imaginary spouse also not be lustful, as some, like Dr. Dobbins, advocate?

Although Dr. Dobbin’s viewpoint does raise some questions, I lean towards agreeing with him more than disagreeing, and I will explain why in the remainder of this chapter. Even those who completely disagree with Dr. Dobbin’s advice would likely agree that it would be better for unmarried people to fantasize about being involved in a married sexual relationship rather than an unmarried sexual relationship, and that gaining sexual release through masturbation would be better than gaining it through fornication.

I realize that those who disagree with Dr. Dobbin’s viewpoint would consider all of those things to be moral compromises. They must, therefore, advocate complete abstinence from masturbation by unmarried persons, or at least abstinence from any sexual fantasy that accompanies masturbation. Personally, I would not listen to anyone who advocated such standards who could not truthfully say that they, as an unmarried person, consistently lived up to those standards. Such prolonged abstinence for most unmarried men (and many unmarried women), would be just as difficult as prolonged sexual abstinence for married people. The God-given sex drives of unmarried and married people are not any different.

Why the Sermon Topic?

I can’t help but wonder why Jesus addressed mental/heart adultery in the Sermon on the Mount. He must have felt it needed to be addressed. Was it because He was hoping to curtail masturbation among teenagers? Or was there some other reason?

If we look at the immediate context of Jesus’ warning, we discover that directly after His words about lust being heart-adultery, He addressed the subject of divorce, also equating it, in some instances, to causing or resulting in adultery. So the consistent theme of the Matthew 5:27-32 passage is adultery. Jesus was revealing that there was a lot more adultery occurring than many in His audience realized. In God’s eyes, adultery was occurring in the hearts of men with lustful eyes and in the lives of many who were involved on some level with divorce. His words simply affirmed the full implications of the Seventh Commandment—”You shall not commit adultery”— which he quoted verbatim. That being so, it is safe to conclude that He was hoping to curtail adultery in its various forms. Keep that in mind as we continue.

Also keep in mind that Jesus was the author of the Law of Moses just as much as He was the Sermon on the Mount. During His ministry, He primarily spoke to Jews, all of whom were under the jurisdiction of the Mosaic Law He gave them. That being so, in His most famous sermon, in which He made numerous references to the Mosaic Law, Jesus certainly did not contradict Himself by contradicting or altering the Mosaic Law. In fact, He said early in the Sermon on the Mount:

Do not think that I came to abolish the Law [of Moses] or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill (Matt. 5:17).

The Greek word translated in the NASB as “fulfill” is pleroo, which is defined in Strong’s Greek Dictionary as “to make replete, to cram” (as one would cram a net with fish), or to “level up.” The idea conveyed is filling up to the brim with more of what is already in a container.[5] So Jesus’ teaching didn’t subtract from, undo, or contradict what He had revealed in the Mosaic Law or Prophets. Rather, He added more of the same revelation. The Sermon on the Mount is a perfect example of that. In it, Jesus affirmed what was already revealed in the Mosaic Law and Prophets, and He clarified biblical concepts that had been clouded by the scribes and Pharisees.

Lusting after one’s neighbor’s wife was clearly forbidden in the Mosaic Law, and not by some obscure regulation, but as a law that earned a spot in the Ten Commandments. The Tenth Commandment prohibited coveting anything that belonged to one’s neighbor, including his wife. As I said in an earlier chapter, most men don’t covet their neighbor’s wives for those women’s culinary skills.

Of course, the Tenth Commandment’s prohibition of heart adultery follows the Seventh Commandment’s prohibition of physical adultery. So Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount what He previously said in the Ten Commandments, only using different words:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery” [the Seventh Commandment]; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart [a component of the Tenth Commandment that is related to the Seventh Commandment]” (Matt. 5:27-28).

Jesus made it clear that the sin of adultery begins even before the physical act is committed. It starts with lust. And that phenomenon did not become true during the Sermon on the Mount. It has always been true.

As Jesus elaborated, He “filled the barrel to the brim” with more revelation that harmonized with the Mosaic Law. Breaking the Tenth Commandment could lead to breaking the Seventh Commandment, so it would be wise to cut off anything that caused one to stumble into lusting after his neighbor’s wife: [6]

If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell (Matt. 5:29-30).

What Jesus Did and Didn’t Say

Jesus did not say in Matthew 5:27-30 that looking at a woman with lust is just as evil as actually committing adultery. For a man to look at a woman with lust, then realize his sin and stop, would certainly make him guilty of a lesser sin than the man who actually commits physical adultery. Physical adultery, however, is always preceded by lust. So, if one avoids mental/heart adultery he will always avoid physical adultery. Thus it makes sense to remove anything that could cause one to stumble into mental/heart adultery.

Again, it’s important to note that Jesus was specifically talking about adultery. He quoted the Seventh Commandment and then expanded on it. Adultery, of course, requires two people, and at least one of them must be married. The English definition of adultery is, “Voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a person who is not his or her spouse.” In the context of the Mosaic Law, the definition of adultery would be expanded to, “Voluntary sexual intercourse between a married or engaged person and a person who is not his or her spouse or fiancé/fiancée.

It is also important to take note that Jesus was specifically speaking to men. That is obvious from His words, “but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28).

So Jesus was speaking about men committing adultery. This does not mean that Jesus thought only men, and not women, could commit adultery or mental/heart adultery. And it does not mean that Jesus did not condemn fornication or that there is no such thing as heart-fornication. It only means that His words in Matthew 5:28 address men committing adultery.

There are only three possible scenarios, by biblical definition, that would constitute adultery by a man: (1) a married man has sex with an unmarried, unengaged woman, (2) a married man has sex with a married or engaged woman or, (3) an unmarried man has sex with a married or engaged woman. An unmarried man cannot commit adultery with an unmarried woman. If two unmarried people engage in sex, they commit the sin of fornication. Jesus was not talking in Matthew 5:27-32 about the sin of fornication; He was talking about the sin of adultery. That is what He said.

Adultery Versus Fornication

There is a clear distinction between adultery and fornication in the New Testament. Different Greek words—moicheia and porneia—identify them. Here are two examples:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators [pornos], nor idolaters, nor adulterers [moichos], nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10).

Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators [pornos] and adulterers [moichos] God will judge (Heb. 13:4).

Jesus certainly acknowledged the difference between adultery and fornication. He said:

That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications [porneia], thefts, murders, adulteries [moicheia], deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man (Mark 7:20-23, emphasis added).

And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality [porneia], and marries another woman commits adultery [moicheia] (Matt. 19:9, emphasis added).

Clearly, porneia and moicheia are not synonymous words, but rather, each have distinct meanings. Although porneia, which can be translated as “sexual immorality” could be referring to any sexual immorality, including even adultery, moicheia only refers to adultery. It was moicheia and mental/heart moicheia that Jesus was addressing in His Sermon on the Mount.

Finally, because adultery requires at least one married person, Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:27-30 can only be referring to men committing adultery with or lusting after engaged or married women. Why? Because Jesus said, “Everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Obviously, “everyone” can only mean “any man” which would include all unmarried and married men. For an unmarried man, however, to commit adultery requires that he have sex with a married or engaged woman. Since what Jesus said applies to all men, unmarried and married, it requires that the woman in the scenario be engaged or married.

All of this is to say that Jesus was specifically warning in Matthew 5:27-28 against any man (1) having sex with an engaged or married woman or (2) lusting after an engaged or married woman, the former being condemned in the Seventh Commandment and the latter being condemned by the Tenth Commandment. Jesus was affirming the Mosaic Law, very precisely, and that will become even more clear momentarily as we dive deeper into the Mosaic Law regarding adultery and fornication.

An Objection

“But,” some readers might object, “Jesus said, “everyone who looks at a woman with lust. He did not say “wife” or “married woman.”

That is true, but there are no distinctive words in ancient Greek for “woman” and “wife.” When Bible translators see the Greek word gune (pronounced goo-nay), they try to determine from the context whether to translate it “woman” or “wife.” For example, an angel said to Joseph as he considered what to do about pregnant Mary, “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife” (Matt. 1:20). The Greek word translated “wife” in that sentence is gune, the same word translated “woman” by NASB translators in Matthew 5:28. When Paul instructed husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church in Ephesians 5:25, the Greek word translated “wives” is gune. When the Pharisees asked Jesus if it was lawful “for a man to divorce a wife” (Mark 10:2), the word translated “wife” is gune.

Translators had the same option in Matthew 5:28, and they chose “woman” over “wife.” Three verses later, in Matthew 5:31, translators chose “wife” over “woman” when translating gune.

Again, adultery by definition requires at least one engaged or married person. Jesus said that if any man, which of course includes all unmarried men, looks at a gune lustfully, he commits adultery. But for an unmarried man to commit adultery requires that the woman with whom he had sex to be married. For that reason, I think translators should have translated gune in Matthew 5:28 as either “wife” (which would include engaged women) or “married woman.” If so, Matthew 5:28 would read, “Any man who looks at a married (or engaged) woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

This is not to imply that God approves of any man looking lustfully at any woman whether she is married or not. Any and all lust is grievous to God, whether it be mental adultery or mental fornication. But lust by any man directed at an engaged or married woman is especially grievous to Him as indicated by the Tenth Commandment, which prohibits lusting after a married/engaged woman, and as implied by the Seventh Commandment, which only prohibits adultery and does not mention fornication. Fornication is not mentioned in the Ten Commandments, whereas lusting after married women is.

In any case, if Jesus was hoping, among other things, to curtail lustful masturbation by unmarried men with His words in Matthew 5:27-30, His words, interpreted accurately, are a warning against them desiring married or engaged women, who would of course be actual, not imaginary, women.

A Closer Look

Still keeping in mind that Jesus was just as much the author of the Mosaic Law as He was the Sermon on the Mount, let’s look at how adultery and fornication were viewed by Jesus before the Mosaic Law and in the Mosaic Law.

Perhaps you were shocked regarding some of the “strange stories” we considered in earlier chapters—for example when biblical men took multiple wives, obviously due, in many if not most cases, to sexual attraction. That is, they were already married to one or more women, but they were attracted to other women who were unmarried, and they married them as well, and had sex with them.

Polygamy probably seems as outlandish to you as it does to me (and probably even more so if you are female), but none of the Old Testament’s polygamists were rebuked by God. Yet when some of those polygamists, either unintentionally (like Pharaoh or Abimelech) or intentionally (like David) took another man’s wife, they got in major trouble with God. It became clear to us as we read those stories that adultery was the big sexual sin, and that polygamy was either not a sin in God’s eyes, or a very minor one. Polygamy was not considered adulterous as long as the polygamist only took unmarried, unengaged women as his wives. It seemed as if God was saying to those ancient men of the Bible, “You can be sexually attracted to and marry as many unmarried women as you desire (keeping in mind that there was always a bride price to be paid), but married women are very much off limits. They already belong to other men.”

Think about it: When God/Jesus gave the Law of Moses to Israel, there were Ten Commandments He felt were most important. It was His “Top Ten” list. One of those commandments prohibited adultery, and another forbade coveting another man’s wife. Reading those two commandments, however, in the context of the hundreds of other commandments within the Mosaic Law, we discover that an Israelite man could lawfully have more than one wife, and wives of varying stature that included concubines. God was also OK with Israelite soldiers sexually desiring unmarried foreign female war captives and taking them as wives or as additional wives. In every case, however, strange or not-as-strange, one message keeps surfacing loud and clear: Sex is reserved only for marriage—whether monogamous or polygamous. Marriage grants exclusive sexual rights. So don’t have sex with another person’s spouse (Commandment 7) and don’t even think about having sex with another man’s wife (Commandment 10). That is mental/heart-adultery.

Sex in the City and the Country

Affirming all of this is another fascinating, and somewhat troubling, passage in the Mosaic Law. Keep in mind that it must, and it does, harmonize with the rest of the Mosaic Law that God/Jesus gave to Israel. I’ve included some bracketed commentary within the text:

If any man takes a wife and goes in to her and then turns against her, and charges her with shameful deeds and publicly defames her, and says, “I took this woman, but when I came near her, I did not find her a virgin,” then the girl’s father and her mother shall take and bring out the evidence of the girl’s virginity [a blood-stained bedsheet, preserved by trusted witnesses for such an occasion, from their daughter’s wedding night that proved her hymen was broken by her husband’s penetration] to the elders of the city at the gate. The girl’s father shall say to the elders, “I gave my daughter to this man for a wife, but he turned against her; and behold, he has charged her with shameful deeds, saying, ‘I did not find your daughter a virgin.’ But this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.” And they shall spread the garment before the elders of the city. So the elders of that city shall take the man and chastise him, and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give it to the girl’s father, because he publicly defamed a virgin of Israel. And she shall remain his wife; he cannot divorce her all his days. [You would think that such a man would have talked to his wife’s parents before he made his self-humiliating accusation…]

But if this charge is true, that the girl was not found a virgin [hopefully based on more evidence than a missing blood-stained bedsheet], then they shall bring out the girl to the doorway of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death because she has committed an act of folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father’s house; thus you shall purge the evil from among you. [I’m thankful for the story in John 8 of the woman caught in adultery when I read passages like this.]

If a man [married or unmarried] is found lying with a married woman, then both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman; thus you shall purge the evil from Israel. [This must be a case of consensual adultery, as revealed by the commandments that follow.]

If there is a girl who is a virgin engaged to a man, and another man [married or unmarried] finds her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and you shall stone them to death; the girl, because she did not cry out in the city [so their sex was consensual], and the man, because he has violated his neighbor’s wife. [Note that she is called “his neighbor’s wife” even though she is only engaged to be married.] Thus you shall purge the evil from among you.

But if in the field the man [married or unmarried] finds the girl who is engaged, and the man forces her and lies with her [rapes her], then only the man who lies with her shall die. But you shall do nothing to the girl; there is no sin in the girl worthy of death, for just as a man rises against his neighbor and murders him, so is this case. When he found her in the field, the engaged girl cried out [the best assumption apart from any evidence], but there was no one to save her.

If a man [married or unmarried] finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her [rapes her] and they are discovered, then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days (Deut. 22:13-28). [According to the law in Exodus 22:16, a man who seduces an unengaged virgin into consensual sex suffers the same penalty: “He must pay a dowry for her to be his wife.”]

Without exploring all the details of this passage from the Law of Moses, take note that we’ve just read about five sexual sins—four that could result in one’s execution, and one that could result in a monetary fine and mandatory marriage. It is safe to conclude the four that merited the death penalty were very grievous to God. It is also safe to conclude that the one that merited a much lesser punishment, although grievous to God, was not as grievous to Him as the other four. Yet all five sins involved lust and illicit sexual intercourse between two people who were not married to each other.

The difference between the four very grievous sins and the one less grievous sin was the marital status of the people involved. The four very grievous sins—that merited capital punishment—involved at least one married or engaged person who had sex with someone to whom they were not married or engaged. All four cases would thus constitute adultery in its broadest sense. Although the first case may have begun as fornication on the part of an unmarried woman (on the other hand, she may have had sex as an unmarried woman with a married man), when she married her sin evolved. She “cheated on her husband” before they were married. If as an unmarried woman she had sex with an unmarried man, she conceivably could have married him (as in the fifth case), preserving her life.

The fifth case was apparently a less grievous sin to God than the first four because it did not involve any married or engaged people. The sin described is fornication via rape. The penalty was a 50-shekel fine the rapist had to pay to the girl’s father, and mandatory marriage to her. That doesn’t make us feel happy for the girl, but having lost her virginity, she would have found it very difficult to find a husband who desired her due to the cultural importance of taking a virgin bride.

Both the fourth and fifth cases involved rape, one of an engaged woman (thus a “wife”) and the other of a unengaged, unmarried woman. Raping an engaged/married woman was a sin, not only against her, but against her fiancé/husband, and it merited death. Raping an unengaged/unmarried woman did not merit death even though it was sin against her and her father, apparently because there was no sin against a husband. The penalty was much less severe, and the sin was “repaired” to a degree by marriage.

All of this is to say that, once again, we see that in God’s eyes adultery was the major sexual sin, just as we saw in many of the “strange stories” of Genesis, just as was emphasized in the Ten Commandments, and just as was emphasized by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. To God/Jesus, committing adultery is exponentially more grievous than for an unmarried man to rape a virgin, as revealed in the passage we just read in Deuteronomy. Although that may be difficult for us to understand, it is so nevertheless.

The Application

What does all this have to do with masturbation accompanied by sexual fantasies by unmarried men and women?

First, God gave all the laws we just read because they were relevant. All those various forms of adultery and fornication were being committed at times among the people of Israel. If the judges of Israel followed through on the punishments prescribed, some lawbreakers forfeited their lives. Others found themselves inescapably married to women whom they raped—women who might justifiably make their lives miserable for a long time. Who would argue that it would not have been better for such folks to have exercised some self-control, even if they had used masturbation to aid them to find sexual release? They would have saved their lives! No one was ever stoned in the Old Testament for masturbation. There were no laws against it.

Second, from all that we’ve been reading in Scripture about how grievous adultery is in God’s eyes, it seems clear it would be a very good idea for unmarried men and women to avoid fantasizing about sexual encounters with persons who are married, actual or imagined.

Third, although fantasizing about unmarried actual persons would perhaps be less grievous to God, one who does might be fantasizing about another person’s future spouse. So it shouldn’t be done. Moreover, such sexual fantasies would seem to be treating another actual person like a sexual object, similar to using porn, and a violation of the Golden Rule. (Would you want someone to whom you are not married fantasizing about a sexual encounter with you?)

Fourth, I don’t think any Christian would disagree that it would be best for unmarried people to completely avoid masturbation and all sexual fantasies if possible. It would, however, seem unrealistic to expect such abstinence from anyone who isn’t gifted by God in that regard, just as much as it would be unrealistic to expect those who aren’t gifted to be “eunuchs for the kingdom,” like the apostle Paul, to remain unmarried all their lives. Again, God has given the same sex drive to unmarried people as He has to married people. Unmarried Christians, however, are not permitted to have sex outside of marriage. Plus, Paul advised regular, consistent sex for married couples to avoid temptation. What are unmarried Christians to do to avoid the same temptations?

For those reasons and others I’ve previously mentioned, I think Dr. Dobbins’ advice regarding fantasies framed in marriage with a future, imaginary spouse is the best route, albeit an imperfect one. If we lived in a culture that promoted arranged, prepubescent marriages, we wouldn’t have to even think about these things. But here we are.

Thankfully, we have a High Priest who sympathizes with our weaknesses (Heb. 4:15), and He also understands our sexual nature better than we do. David (the guy who had at least eight wives and ten concubines) wrote under the Spirit’s inspiration:

The Lord is like a father to his children,
tender and compassionate to those who fear him.
For he knows how weak we are;
he remembers we are only dust (Ps. 103:13-14, NLT).

I’m so glad for that!

As I promised at the start of the previous chapter, I’ve searched the Scriptures for any and all grace I can find for unmarried Christians in regard to masturbation. I know not all will agree with me, but I’ve done the best I can.

[1] Playing to cultural trends, the title was changed in an 1887 edition to, Plain Facts for Old and Young: Embracing the Natural History and Hygiene of Organic Life. It can be read at https://archive.org/details/plainfaorold00kell/mode/2up .

[2] The shame that often accompanies masturbation is sometimes pointed to as evidence of God’s disapproval. It is, however, perhaps more so evidence of cultural disapproval, as indicated by the fact that the shame associated with masturbation decades ago has significantly decreased as culture has become much more accepting. Christians who masturbate know full well that God sees them masturbating, but that doesn’t stop them, whereas if they thought any human was aware they were in the process of masturbating, they would be much more likely to immediately stop.

[3] “When you go out as an army against your enemies, you shall keep yourself from every evil thing. If there is among you any man who is unclean because of a nocturnal emission, then he must go outside the camp; he may not reenter the camp. But it shall be when evening approaches, he shall bathe himself with water, and at sundown he may reenter the camp” (Deut. 23:9-11).

[4] Also, incidentally, if God wanted to condemn, somewhere in the Bible, seminal emissions due to masturbation, these passages in Leviticus 15 and Deuteronomy 23 would have been perfect places to do it.

[5] For some examples of New Testament usage of pleroo translated in the NASB as “filled” or “filled up,” see Matt. 13:47-48, 23:32; John 12:3; 16:6 and Eph. 3:19.

[6] Most Bible readers and commentators are persuaded that Jesus was not literally advocating tearing out one’s eye or cutting off one’s hand to avoid sexual stumbling, but was advocating that it is wise to avoid/remove what causes one to stumble into mental/heart adultery lest it lead to physical adultery and hell.

The post More about Masturbation appeared first on David Servant.

PLEASE NOTE: This e-teaching is not appropriate for children, preadolescents, and many adolescents.

Because I happen to know that there is a lot of interest in the topic of masturbation, I also realize that the danger exists that many readers started this book by scanning the table of contents in hopes of locating a chapter on the subject. You can see by my chapter title that I’ve made it very easy for those readers to find what interests them.

If you are one of those readers, however, I’m going to request that you employ some restraint and not read it without first reading all the prior chapters. The reason is because those chapters frame this one within some essential context. We’ve considered some “strange sexual Scriptural stories” and some relevant revelation from the Mosaic Law. I’ve warned strongly against the dangers of porn. Those earlier chapters lay a foundation that will help make this one even more beneficial than it would otherwise be. If you haven’t already read them, please do.

OK, from this point onward, I’m going to trust that every reader has heeded my advice. So now let’s talk about masturbation.

Who Does It?

Surveys indicate that the large majority of people, both men and women, have masturbated. Here’s the data from a survey of Americans:

Despite its commonality as a sexual experience, masturbation is often considered taboo, more so than other sex-related topics. As with most taboo subjects, many wonder what’s normal or average in this area. To begin, the vast majority of American men and women report having masturbated at some point, although more men than women say they have masturbated at least once (89 percent and 70 percent respectively). But the frequency with which men and women report masturbating is widely divergent. Nearly twice as many women as men (50 percent vs. 27 percent) report that it has been at least six months since they last masturbated (or that they have never masturbated). Meanwhile, men are far more likely to report recent masturbation. Twice as many men as women report masturbating within the past week (54 percent and 26 percent, respectively) and over three times as many men as women report masturbating either the day of the survey or the day before (28 percent and 9 percent, respectively). So while most men and women have masturbated, men report doing so substantially more often than women.[1]

To reiterate what we just read, a little over half of American men, and about a fourth of American women, masturbate on a weekly basis. The survey did not reveal the percentage of those who combined pornography with masturbation. It did, however, reveal that masturbation is not something only done by single people:

Although masturbation is more common among those who are not romantically involved with anyone, it is hardly uncommon among those who are in romantic and/or sexual relationships. Among men who have no romantic partner, two in three (66 percent) report masturbating within the past week, compared to half (51 percent) of those who are involved with someone. Among women the differences are much smaller: 29 percent of single women and 25 percent of coupled women report masturbating in the week prior to the survey, a difference that can be accounted for by the differing age distributions of single and coupled women.

The survey I’m citing did not ask respondents’ marital status, but only if they were currently “romantically/sexually involved” with someone. It would seem safe to assume that many romantically/sexually-involved survey respondents were married, which would indicate that as many as 51 percent of the married men and as many as 25 percent of the married women masturbate at least weekly, which is probably not a good sign regarding their marriages. I’ll address masturbation within marriage later.

The survey I’m citing also did not ask respondents any questions regarding their identification with any religion. In light of the statistics, however, regarding porn use by professing Christians compared to non-Christians, I suspect the percentage of professing Christians who regularly masturbate would not be significantly less than non-Christians. Of course, just because a certain percentage of men and woman regularly masturbate does not make masturbation morally right or wrong.

As I shared in this book’s introduction, it was hundreds of thousands of young men who viewed a video teaching I posted on YouTube titled, Is Masturbation a Sin According to the Bible? who were my initial inspiration to write this book. When I began this project several months ago, over 560,000 people, mostly young men, had watched that video. Today when I looked it was over 700,000. Most are young men who: (1) are at the lifetime-peak of their God-designed and God-given sexual drive, (2) are daily being bombarded with sexual imagery and provocatively-dressed women, (3) find themselves increasingly more sensitive to sexual stimuli as their God-designed bodies cyclically build up a supply of semen until they receive some physical release either through sex, masturbation, or a nocturnal emission and (4), live in cultures that discourage pubertal and early marriage.

Many are trying to please God, and they consequently aren’t frequenting bars to pick up females for one-night stands. Nor are they fornicating with their girlfriends. Many are doing their best to resist entanglement with porn. Still, they masturbate with some degree of regularity. They try to stop, but find it very difficult or seemingly impossible.

Looking for answers, they turn to Christian leaders—who most often are men who are married, who masturbated up until marriage, who have also masturbated at times as married men, and who tell them it is wrong for them to masturbate! (Paul’s words in Romans 2:22 come to mind: “You who say that one should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery?”) Some go so far as to teach that masturbation is a form of sexual immorality that will send one to hell. Yet even that threat does not provide strong enough motivation for most single masturbators to overcome their habit. They feel addicted. It is for those men that I’m going to try and find some grace in the Bible. Of course, most of what I write will have some application to women, but please forgive me if I focus on men, as they have a greater propensity towards masturbation.

Masturbation is most often condemned because of its association with lust. If lust is morally wrong, and if masturbation always includes lust, then masturbation must always be morally wrong. That simple logic is persuasive. There are, however, some alternative views which challenge that logic. Let’s explore them.

Challenge #1: Scripture’s Deafening Silence

It is quite logical to think that, if masturbation was morally wrong, the Bible would plainly say so. Yet not only does the Bible never condemn masturbation, it never even mentions it. Not one word. Not even an allusion to it using some alternate phrase like “self-stimulate, “self-pleasure” or “solo sex.”

That is significant, because the Bible is no small book. Rather, it is a collection of 66 books, consisting of 1,189 chapters, 31,103 verses and 807,361 words. Moreover, it addresses many sexual topics. It includes a lot of positive references to sex. And, as we have already learned, it enumerates numerous sexual behaviors that God condemns, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, incest, lust, rape, and bestiality (sex with animals).

Personally, I would never have thought it would be necessary for God to say anything in His Word regarding the inappropriateness of humans having sex with animals. How many people are tempted to commit that sin? Of those who are, how many yield?

Compared to the frequency of other sexual sins committed by humans, the practice of bestiality is extremely rare. And compared to the prevalence of masturbation, it is practically non-existent in human experience. Yet God condemned bestiality, a very rare practice, four times in the Bible,[2] but never once did He mention, condemn or forbid masturbation, an act that is nearly universal. His silence on the subject is deafening.

Think about how many times adultery is condemned in Scripture by way of direct commandment (as within the Ten Commandments) and by example (as with David and Bathsheba). The act of masturbation must be thousands of times more common than adultery in human experience.[3] Yet masturbation is not mentioned even once in Scripture, much less condemned.

Is it wrong to think that, if masturbation is morally wrong, God would have mentioned that it is wrong somewhere within the Bible’s pages? That it would have been condemned in at least one of the Bible’s 31,000 verses?

In response, some say that, although masturbation is never mentioned or condemned in Scripture, lust is condemned, and because masturbation always involves lust, every time Scripture condemns lust it likewise condemns masturbation.

Even if all of that is true, we still can’t help but wonder why the Bible is completely silent on the subject of masturbation. Adultery always involves lust, but God found reason to repeatedly condemn it—specifically by its name—and not just by its association with lust. Why didn’t He do the same regarding masturbation, a practice that is much more prevalent than adultery? Why didn’t He condemn it at least once during the 1,500-or-so years that He was speaking through the authors of the Bible? His silence makes me wonder if we are missing something in our understanding.

Some say the Bible does mention masturbation in “veiled references.” The interpretation of those veiled references, however, is subjective, as we will soon see. Even if the subjective interpretations of those veiled references are accurate, we still must ask, Why is the sole “evidence” for God’s alleged condemnation of masturbation found only in the subjective interpretations of a few tiny fragments of Scripture, interpretations that stand in contradiction to the Bible’s complete absence of any specific and plain condemnation of the act? Can anyone cite another sexual sin that has been committed by multitudes of people for all of human history that is not directly and specifically condemned in the Bible? So why is masturbation the single exception? Let’s consider some of the most common alleged “veiled references” to masturbation.

Onan’s Sin

The story of Onan, son of Judah, grandson of Israel, has been so often been associated with masturbation that Onan’s very name has been incorporated into an English synonym for masturbation: onanism. The biblical story of Onan, however, actually has nothing to do with masturbation.

Although I’ve mentioned Onan’s story in an earlier chapter where we considered the practice of levirate marriage, let me briefly refresh your memory. Onan’s older brother, Er, died, because he “was evil in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord took his life” (Gen. 38:7). So Onan’s father, Judah, told him to do something that was later stipulated in the Mosaic Law,[4] that is, marry his brother’s childless widow with the understanding that their consequent children would be his deceased brother’s heirs (Gen. 38:8). Onan obeyed his father, but only limitedly:

Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so when he went in to his brother’s wife, he wasted his seed on the ground in order not to give offspring to his brother. But what he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord; so He took his life also (Gen. 38:9-10).

Did we just read about masturbation? No, Onan had sex with his brother’s widow. That is not masturbation. That is sexual intercourse. Just before he climaxed, Onan intentionally withdrew himself in order to avoid impregnating her, lest he give her a child who would legally be an heir of his deceased brother.

God wasn’t angry with Onan because he masturbated, because he didn’t masturbate. And God wasn’t angry with him because “he wasted his seed on the ground.” That is something that occurs involuntarily any time a human male has a nocturnal emission. (If Jesus had a standard human body, He had nocturnal emissions.) God was angry at Onan because of his selfishness towards his deceased brother and particularly his brother’s widow. Onan had no scruples about taking her as a wife and repeatedly enjoying sex with her, but he wanted her to remain childless so that he would gain his deceased brother’s inheritance.

To use Onan’s story as proof that masturbation is a sin is a preposterous twisting of Scripture. To create a word that includes Onan’s name and is a synonym for masturbation is indefensible.

Paul’s Alleged Condemnation of Masturbation

It is sometimes claimed that Paul condemned masturbation via a veiled reference when he, in his first letter to the Corinthians, warned married couples against sexually depriving each other:

Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband. The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control (1 Cor. 7:1-5).

According to Paul, Satan may tempt sexually-deprived married persons who lack self-control. It isn’t difficult to imagine the devil whispering into the ear of a sexually-deprived married man: “You aren’t getting the sex you need from your wife, so why not proposition your neighbor’s wife, or find a prostitute?”

Either option, of course, would be an act of adultery.

Keep in mind that non-marital sex was readily available and easily accessible in Corinth, where the recipients of Paul’s letter lived. As I’ve previously mentioned, sex with prostitutes and slaves was entirely acceptable in much of the ancient world, both legally and culturally. Any Corinthian man who was inclined could walk to a local brothel or pagan temple and engage in sex with a prostitute. Perhaps that was one reason Paul wrote exclusively to the Corinthians:

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, ‘The two shall become one flesh.’ But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee immorality (Greek: porneia)” (1 Cor. 6:15-18).

Some speculate that Paul not only had the temptation to commit adultery in mind when he warned sexually-deprived married persons, but also the temptation to masturbate, and that this passage is one of those “veiled references” I mentioned earlier.

One problem with that interpretation is that it makes Paul warn against a sin that is never once mentioned in the entire Bible, including Paul’s writings, as being a sin. If there was ever a good opportunity for Paul to mention or condemn masturbation, it would have been in the sex- and marriage-related passages in his first letter to the Corinthians. But Paul said not a word on the subject there, or elsewhere. That being the case, could Paul’s warning to sexually-deprived married Christians be intelligently paraphrased, “Come together again so that Satan will not tempt you to commit a sin that is never once mentioned or condemned in the entire Bible”? That seems unlikely.

Another problem with that interpretation is that a sexually-deprived married person could masturbate while imagining his or her spouse, which would not be lustful by definition. Jesus, for example, equated lust with adultery of the heart. So, imagining a sexual encounter with one’s spouse is not lust. Some married men report that such masturbation—when they must be apart from their wives for extended periods and face subsequent daily-heightened sexual sensitivity—is a safeguard against temptation and a preventative against adultery. It is hard to argue against that. A sexually-deprived married person could make the same argument that spouse-centered masturbation helps him/her avoid adultery and lust.[5]

Challenge #2: Masturbation as a Sin Preventative

In light of all this, and since Paul clearly recommended that married couples regularly engage in sex as a preventative against sexual sin, the question could be asked regarding masturbation and non-married persons: Would Paul then condemn non-lustful masturbation for those who don’t have the benefit of marital sexual release if it helped them to avoid fornication? In light of all the interest regarding masturbation, especially by sincere, single Christians struggling with God-given sexual desire, I’d like to explore that idea a little further.

You may question how masturbation could be non-lustful for an unmarried person. Although it is often assumed that lust must always accompany masturbation, that assumption is wrong.

Although imagining a sexual encounter with the opposite sex during masturbation might make it more pleasurable and increase the chance of achieving orgasm, such imaginations are not essential. In his book, Your Brain on Porn (mentioned in Chapter 5), Gary Wilson suggests a self-test for porn-using men who find themselves with diminished libido or erectile function. By administering his recommended test, they can determine if their problem is caused by their brain being “rewired” by porn use or because of some other reason. He writes:

1.) First, see a good urologist and rule out any medical abnormality.

2.) Next, on one occasion masturbate to your favorite porn (or simply imagine how it was if you’ve sworn it off).

3.) Then, on another occasion masturbate with no porn and without fantasizing about porn.

Compare the quality of your erections and time it took to climax (if you can climax). A healthy young man should have no trouble attaining a full erection and masturbating to orgasm without porn or porn fantasy.

The young man who cannot masturbate to a climax without porn or porn fantasy knows that his brain needs “rebooting” (see Chapter 5) if he is to recover normal sexual performance and desire.

Regardless, there are at least two ways that masturbation need not involve lust: (1) when it is done by married persons who imagine their spouse and (2), when it is done without imagining a sexual encounter. For such cases, the argument that masturbation is always morally wrong because it always involves lust is invalidated.

Some suggest that there is a third way that masturbation by unmarried people need not involve lust, and that is if it is done while thinking of an imaginary person, perhaps even an imaginary future spouse, so that one is imagining a sexual encounter within the holy context of marriage, and thus an actual person is not the object of one’s desire. Technically at least, such an imagination differs from what Jesus condemned: “Everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28).

A problem with that, however, is that if such a single person becomes engaged to be married, that single person is then regularly masturbating while imagining a sexual encounter with someone other than the actual person to whom he/she is going to be married, which could understandably be quite offensive to one’s fiancée/fiancé if it was known. Some who advocate this means of masturbation apart from lust suggest that, after engagement, it is OK to imagine sex with one’s fiancée/fiancé, and that such masturbation can serve as a safeguard against committing fornication prior to the wedding night. Readers will have to judge the merits of this viewpoint for themselves.

Burning with Passion and Lacking Self-Control

You may recall that in the previous chapter, I made reference to Paul’s advice in 1 Corinthians to single Christians:

Yet I wish that all men were even as I myself am. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that. But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion (1 Cor. 7:7-8).

Paul clearly acknowledged that there were single Christians in Corinth who were “burning with passion.” So sexual thoughts were consuming them to some degree. And they did “not have self-control.” To what degree they lacked self-control we are not told. At bare minimum, they lacked the self-control to remain unmarried. But their lack of sexual self-control could have been manifested in other ways. For them, Paul wisely advised marriage. Marriage, which provides the opportunity for regular, legitimate sex, is the solution for Christians who burn with passion and who lack sexual self-control.

In light of this, and in regard to the appropriateness of masturbation, the question is sometimes asked: If Paul actually thought masturbation was a legitimate means of sexual release for the unmarried who are “burning with passion” and “lacking self-control,” why didn’t he also recommend masturbation as he did marriage?

A possible short answer to that question is that God’s ultimate intention in creating males and females with sexual desire was not so they would all masturbate. Rather, it was that they would marry. Masturbation is a very inferior substitute for marriage.

Beyond that, it is possible that the single people whom Paul had in mind in this passage—those who were “burning with passion” and who “did not have self-control”—were already masturbating. To think otherwise would seem naïve. Of course, single men who are “burning with passion” and who consequently masturbate only find temporary sexual relief. It isn’t long before they find themselves once again burning with passion. For such Christians, marriage, not masturbation, is the only good solution.

In any case, I hope you noticed the grace in Paul’s words to single people who are burning with passion and lacking self-control. There is no hint of condemnation. He wished that everyone had his self-control, but he recognized it was a gift not given to all. He also acknowledged that other Christians had a different “gift.” That gift could only be the gift of sexual desire—that sometimes burns with passion—and finds fulfillment only in marriage.

In the Interim

Do you suppose all the single Christians in Corinth who were “burning with passion” and “lacking self-control” ran out and got married the day after Paul’s letter was publicly read? No, I suspect it took a while for most of them to land a willing mate. Even arranged marriages take some time.[6] So there was no better solution until they were married. Until then, they would continue, at least at times, to find themselves burning with passion and lacking self-control.

Paul’s sympathy for sexually-frustrated single Christians should certainly not be interpreted as a license to sin in light of his warning to the Corinthian Christians that sexually immoral people and adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of God:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators (Greek: pornos, or “sexually immoral”) nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God (1 Cor. 6:9-11).

Take note that Paul did not include “those who burn with passion and lack self-control” in his list of those who will not inherit the kingdom of God. Only if they became fornicators were they in spiritual danger. Paul did not condemn single people who struggled with their God-given sexual desires. And he never said that those who masturbate are sexually immoral.

Challenge #3: God’s Empathy Regarding Male Sexual Desire

Since it was God who gave all men (and women) sexual desire, He naturally empathizes with those who are frustrated because of what He gave them. This fact seems to be rarely taken into consideration when the subject of masturbation is discussed. One of my early (male) readers expressed it this way: “Given what we know about how God has made us, it seems silly to me to think that He would make this drive so strong in us but then expect us to completely repress it until we can marry.”

In previous chapters, I’ve tried to point out Scripture’s affirmation of what all men already know about the highly-sensitive visual nature and relentless tug of standard male sexual desire. As I did, I was often fearful that female readers might conclude men are beasts.

If you are a female who wants to better understand standard male sexual desire, I would recommend Shaunti Feldhahn’s landmark book, For Women Only: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men, particularly chapters six, seven and nine. Feldhahn candidly admits that she was shocked when she first began surveying and interviewing Christian men regarding their daily sexual struggles:

Here’s the insight I stumbled on by accident, and which applies to even the most faithful of husbands: Regardless of whether they let this temptation into their thoughts (and many men work hard to avoid doing so), the unique wiring of the male brain creates an instinctive pull to visually consume the image of an attractive woman—and these images can be just as alluring whether they are live or recollected. Two areas of this “men are visual” thing surfaced that I, at least, didn’t really get before:

—First, a woman who is dressed to show off a great body is an eye magnet that is incredibly difficult to avoid, and even if a man forces himself to not look, he is acutely aware of that woman’s presence.

—Second, even when no such eye magnet is present, each man has a mental photo file of stored images that can intrude into his thoughts without warning, or be called up at will.

Keep in mind that Feldhahn was writing mostly about married men in those paragraphs, men who have some degree of sexual satisfaction in their marriages. The struggles of single men are even more acute.

Wait, There’s Still More…

Feldhahn co-authored a follow-up book with Craig Gross titled, Through a Man’s Eyes, which explores the visual nature of male sexual attraction so thoroughly and candidly that the book’s introduction includes a warning to women who are apt to be shocked by, and thus misapply, what they are about to learn. Feldhahn and Gross reference the neuroscience behind men’s visual sexual nature, and they do an excellent job explaining the instinctive, involuntary reaction that men’s brains experience when exposed to sexual imagery. It turns out that those old cartoons of men’s eyes jumping out of their sockets when a curvaceous woman walks by were not so far from reality.

In a chapter titled, Just Because They Want to Look Doesn’t Make Them Jerks, Feldhahn describes how even pre-pubescent boys find themselves attracted to female forms:

It is hard for many of us [women] that the initial visual pleasure—and temptation—is truly involuntary and biological, even for guys who want to do the right thing. It can help to understand that this visual awareness and resulting desire are present even in very young boys who have no concept of sex—and yet have exactly the same type of physical pleasure and draw that we’ve been talking about here.

I’m sure I’m not the only mom to have seen this type of thing. One woman told me that she took her three-year-old son with her to a fabric store, where she browsed the sewing patterns while he sat on a chair and looked at pictures in his book. At least she thought he was looking at his book. Unbeknownst to her, he found the sewing-pattern images of women in their underwear much more fascinating. A few minutes later he yelled across the crowded store, “Mom! Every time I look at these girls my pee-pee stands up!”

This little boy was three years old and had no idea what sex was…but he still had a male brain.

After a man experiences an involuntary, biological, visually-triggered, pleasurable, neurological reaction to sexual imagery, he then has the ability to choose to continue to indulge or to look away. That is when the inner war begins. Even if he looks elsewhere, the photo that his brain captured of the provocative image might pop up in his imagination immediately afterwards, or at some point in the future, without warning.

God’s Surprising Concessions

Why did God make men this way? Perhaps because He intended that the only sexual imagery that would enter male brains through male eyes would be images of their wives, resulting in marital bonding, ever-deepening love, and lots of babies. He probably also intended that marriage would occur close to puberty. Back in the day when most marriages were arranged, wise parents certainly factored that in.

Regardless, God knows we’re no longer living in Eden, and He definitely made some concessions in the Law of Moses regarding male sexual desire. Some of those concessions are likely to disturb modern Puritans like me and you. For example, Deuteronomy 21 contains a biblical passage from the Law of Moses that you’ll never see on anyone’s refrigerator door:

When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself, then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails. She shall also remove the clothes of her captivity and shall remain in your house, and mourn her father and mother a full month; and after that you may go in to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. It shall be, if you are not pleased with her, then you shall let her go wherever she wishes; but you shall certainly not sell her for money, you shall not mistreat her, because you have humbled her (Deut. 21:10-14).

Christians don’t like to think about the fact that Jesus is the one who gave this law concerning female prisoners of war, but because He is one with His Father (John 10:30), He is an author of the Mosaic Law just as much as He was the Sermon on the Mount. Keep in mind the Law of Moses was Israel’s rulebook from the time of the Exodus to Christ’s death, between 1,600 and 1,300 years.

Perhaps our only consolation regarding Deuteronomy 21:10-14 is that in the Old Testament’s recounting of wars, we find that the Lord generally supported Israel when they were obeying His commandments, and He often used them as a tool of His judgment upon wicked nations. So there were, at times, prisoners of war, and sometimes Israelite soldiers saw beautiful female captives to whom they were attracted enough to desire them as wives (which, we can concede, was morally superior to raping and killing them).

In fact, just prior to Moses’ death, God/Jesus instructed Israel to go to war against the Midianites to execute His judgment upon them, and 12,000 Israelite troops killed all the Midianite men. They returned to Israel’s border, however, not only with plunder but also with war captives who consisted of Midianite females and children. Moses was quite upset about it, saying:

Have you spared all the women? Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the Lord [see Num. 15:1-9 for the details]. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves (Num. 31:15-18).

Without commenting on the troubling barbarity and patriarchal essence of what we’ve just read, I simply want to point out that only the virgin female captives were spared, and for the purpose of becoming wives of Israelite men, an example of what was regulated by the laws we previously read from Deuteronomy 21:10-14. I assume what was prescribed there was an upgrade from what was ordinarily practiced regarding female prisoners of war by other nations at the time, particularly as I read the clause that addresses a captive’s first month’s treatment while she mourns for her parents (which implies she was an unmarried virgin rather than a widow), and the final clause concerning proper divorce.

Nevertheless, we have one more illustration of the nature of male sexual desire and a surprising concession God made for it. An Israelite soldier sees a beautiful young woman among the captives of war, and just from seeing her, without knowing anything about her personality or character, desires her and takes her as a wife. And although we all cringe just thinking about it, we know from reading the rest of the Mosaic Law that such an Israelite soldier might already have a wife or wives, and that the captive woman whom he desires could be an additional wife rather than his sole wife. In fact, the very next passage in Deuteronomy is one we’ve examined in an earlier chapter that regulates the inheritance of a man who has two wives, one of whom he loves and one of whom he does not love (see Deut. 21:15-17).

These particular laws that regulate marriage to female war prisoners, by their existence, indicate that God was empathetic towards Israelite soldiers who were sexually attracted to female war captives. Note that the primary reason an Israelite soldier might desire a female war captive as a wife is because she is “beautiful.” Marriage would give him exclusive sexual rights to her. Sexual desire was definitely part of the equation. And that was OK with God/Jesus, who invented human sexual desire.

That doesn’t mean, however, that God/Jesus didn’t require some self-control from Israelite men who took female war captives as wives. After taking such women into their homes, out of some consideration for them, they had to wait a month before having sex with them. That requirement speaks volumes about male sexual desire. The reason God told them to wait is because they didn’t want to wait. The primary reason they took such wives was for the sex, as is made clear from God’s instructions to wait a month: “After that you may go in to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife” (Deut. 21:13).

I must admit that it is difficult to imagine that many marriages to female war captives were successful, as all of Israel’s female war captives were generally born and raised in depraved, pagan cultures, not to mention the fact that most female war captives might find it difficult to love husbands who were members of the army that recently killed their parents. Perhaps all of this is why the final clause in Deuteronomy 21:10-14 provides for easy divorce: “It shall be, if you are not pleased with her, then you shall let her go wherever she wishes; but you shall certainly not sell her for money, you shall not mistreat her, because you have humbled her (Deut. 21:14).

In spite of the obvious chances of such marriages failing, God/Jesus still allowed them, another indication of His surprising empathy towards the divinely-designed and given sexual nature of males.

The Application

What does all of this have to do with God’s attitude towards masturbation by unmarried men? Perhaps nothing. However, God/Jesus was OK with Israelite soldiers being sexually attracted to beautiful female war captives and taking them, based only on a visual encounter, as experimental wives. That would seem to be an incredible concession to male sexual nature. It’s embarrassing to those of us who love the Bible and potentially infuriating to any female who reads this passage. Could the same tolerant God be intolerant of unmarried men masturbating, something driven by the same God-given sexual nature as the soldier who takes a female war captive, and something that is arguably much less potentially harmful?

While such a soldier was obediently and patiently waiting for the required month of sexual abstinence to be over, do you suppose he may have thought about what he’d be doing when the month of waiting was over? Keep in mind his new wife was already living in his home. The whole reason he took her as a wife was because of her beauty in his eyes. So did he entertain any sexual thoughts that month? Is it possible that he even masturbated while imagining his future sexual relationship with his new wife? If so, would the God who was OK with him being sexually attracted to a beautiful war captive and taking her as an experimental wife be angry at him for it?

By the way, on what planet do engaged people—who aren’t already sinfully having sex with each other—never think about sex with their future spouse? And isn’t sexual desire designed to motivate people to marry and to remain married? If “yes,” how does that work apart from sexual thoughts and imaginations?

Beyond God’s empathy regarding male sexual desire demonstrated by His law regarding marriage to female war captives, what about His empathy demonstrated by His toleration of polygamy? Knowing that He was OK with married men being sexually attracted to unmarried women and taking them as additional wives, does that make us think He would have no toleration for unmarried men who masturbate? Can we imagine David, who had at least eight wives and ten concubines, saying to his unmarried teenage sons, “Boys, God is perfectly OK with me having eighteen exclusive sexual partners. That’s the reason you don’t see me around much in the evenings. But don’t any of you dare to think about a naked woman or a sexual encounter until you have your own first wife or concubine!”?[7]

But doesn’t all this contradict Jesus’ prohibition against looking at a woman to lust for her, something he equated to heart adultery?

Of course, Jesus can’t contradict Jesus. New Testament Jesus can’t contradict Old Testament Jesus. Jesus could not have been warning against what He permitted in the Mosaic Law.[8] He could not have been warning against Israelite men being sexually attracted to beautiful, virgin war captives and marrying them, or even against married Israelite men being sexually attracted to unmarried Israelite women and marrying them. So we have to look for a way that New Testament Jesus harmonizes with Old Testament Jesus. And in the next chapter (next month’s e-teaching), that is what we’ll try to do! In the meantime, do send me your thoughts!—David

[1] For the entire survey results, see https://relationshipsinamerica.com/relationships-and-sex/what-predicts-masturbation-practices)

[2] Ex. 22:19; Lev. 18:23; 20:15-16; Deut. 27:21

[3] The survey I just cited indicated that 51% of American males reported masturbating in the previous week. It is quite doubtful that anywhere close to that percentage committed actual, physical adultery in the previous week.

[4] See Deut. 25:5-10

[5] Of course, a married person could use masturbation as a substitute for sex and consequently deprive his or her spouse of sex. That would be wrong.

[6] Moreover, some Christian fathers in Corinth had decided to not give their daughters in marriage for the foreseeable future; see 1 Cor. 7:36-38.

[7] Incidentally, David had a son, Amnon, who raped his half-sister and David’s daughter, Tamar.

[8] Granted, there are some who believe that, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus altered the Mosaic Law, something that He, as God, would certainly have the right to do. Against that idea, however, is the fact that Jesus said in His Sermon on the Mount, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill” (Matt. 5:17). In that very same sermon, Jesus went on to do just that: He filled to the full what was already contained in the Mosaic Law and the Prophets.

The post This is the Chapter About Masturbation appeared first on David Servant.

PLEASE NOTE: This e-teaching is not appropriate for children, preadolescents, and many adolescents.

As I was writing earlier chapters, my heart was going out to single adults who are striving to be sexually pure, as I knew I might be stirring desires they’re struggling to suppress. It’s not always easy to follow Jesus in a sex-saturated society, and it is especially challenging for single Christians. The temptation to compromise sexually on some level is significant.

Consider the email below that I received from a Kenyan teenager while I was writing this chapter. You may be surprised to read how young she was when she was introduced to porn and became sexually active, but her story represents the tragic experience and regular struggles of innumerable Christian singles:

I was relatively young when I started watching porn. A family friend who was a bit older introduced me to it. Then I was young and I enjoyed it as my Christian background wasn’t that strong and I didn’t know it was wrong. I had sex with her young brother then.. several times and it was good for me. Her older brother molested me but I never told anyone as I didn’t see any wrong in it. An older cousin did the same too but I kept mute about it all. I had sex with my small cousins too later and even had sex with a female cousin. I thrived in it and forced my small cousin into it sometimes. Back then I was only ten and it seem so right. When I joined high school, I realized all that I had been doing wasn’t right and I hated that part of myself and having been so naive. I used to masturbate as a child and as a teen recently I have been doing it a lot. I go to church and I believe in God and I know it is a sin. I really want to stop but I don’t know how. I have tried so many times but it doesn’t work that much. Sometimes I blame my past but that is an excuse. I hope you can pray for me. I am afraid to open up to my family in fear of being judged.

Don’t Try This at Home

Renowned third-century theologian Origen struggled with lust as a young man, but he solved his problem by self-castration, like one might neuter a cat. His act, he felt, was in keeping with a literal interpretation of Jesus’ words in Matthew 19:12: “There are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.”

I’m certainly not recommending that anyone follow Origen’s example, but I’d like to make two observations about his drastic action.

First, the removal of both his testicles and the subsequent significant reduction in his body’s production of testosterone, which apparently gave him some victory over lust,[1] is a reminder that male sexual desire (like female sexual desire) is biological and God-given. One should not fault oneself for sexual desire any more than one should fault oneself with the desire to sleep, eat, or use the toilet. Sexual desire is natural and there is nothing inherently wrong with it. Yet Origen cut off what God put on. He killed what God had made alive. I wonder why he didn’t also cut out his tongue to be delivered from the sin of gossip and the desire to drink alcohol lest he ever get drunk? It would have made just as much sense.

Second, Origen is emblematic of so many good, godly single Christians who struggle with sexual desire. Although they never resort to such extreme measures as Origen, they know the self-loathing that Origen suffered before he mutilated himself. They feel at times that they are fighting a battle they cannot win. So they surrender. They fantasize, view porn, masturbate, or indulge in illicit sexual activity, and they feel miserable with guilt afterwards. They vow to do better but continue stumbling.

When you’ve come to the end of your rope, sometimes it feels like the only solution is to simply let go and fall into the dark abyss. I’m happy to tell you, however, that God has something much better for His children than that. He is all-powerful. He is in the redemption business. He transforms people.

Think of the madman of Gadara, whose story we find in three of the four Gospels. He was living in a graveyard, running around naked, cutting himself with stones and screaming night and day (Mark 5:1-20). The demons who possessed him made it possible for him to break chains that were used to try to restrain him. Those same demons, once out of him, possessed 2,000 pigs and drove them to suicide.

No one dreamed there was any hope for the madman’s deliverance. But within a few minutes of encountering Jesus, he was “clothed and in his right mind” (Mark 5:15).

I’m certainly not implying that Christians, single or married, who struggle with sexual temptation are demon-possessed (although many, in desperation, have attempted to cast demons out of themselves). I’m only mentioning Jesus’ deliverance of the madman of Gadara as an inspiring example of His power to transform people. Nothing is too difficult for the Lord. If He can deliver the madman of Gadara from 2,000 demons, chances are pretty good that He can deliver anyone from temptations and bad habits. Think about that, and let your faith increase.

I’m going to employ the remainder of this chapter, and all of the next, focusing on how single and sexual Christians can enjoy God’s best. If you are single, God has a store of empathy, encouragement, edification, and empowerment just for you. He really loves you. So, prepare for more positivity in what follows.

Although this chapter is written with single Christians in mind, it is very applicable to married believers, as we all know that marriage may make sexual self-control easier, but it does not put an end to sexual temptation.

Let’s start with a list of foundational biblical truths, all of which should make you feel better if you are struggling with sexual temptation.

#1: Your Passion is Predictable and Scriptural

As the creator of sex, God understands sexual desire better than anyone. By programming sexual desire and then prohibiting sex outside of marriage, He generated a huge incentive for men and women to marry. Of course, there are many reasons that both sexes desire marriage, but sex is certainly not the least of them.

Related to this, Paul candidly penned under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “It is better to marry than to burn with passion” (1 Cor. 7:9). Paul’s phrasing reveals that, for unmarried men or women, there is nothing unusual about “burning with passion.” Don’t think there is anything wrong with you if you’ve found yourself inflamed at times. And please don’t pay any attention to pseudo-spiritual types who try to tell you that true Christians don’t have sexual desires.

There are, of course, some sexual desires that are not God-given, but rather are perversions that the Bible condemns. They are acquired by repeatedly yielding to temptation. I’ll addresses this topic later, but for now, suffice it to say God can deliver anyone who wants to be delivered from any perverse sexual desire, no matter how deviant it is.

It also true that one’s normal, God-given sex drive can be over-stimulated by various means, such as by habitually viewing porn, so that a normal sex drive turns abnormal and wreaks havoc in one’s life. If you are married, a porn-fueled abnormal sex drive can destroy your marriage. If you are unmarried, it can destroy your future marriage. I’ll also address this topic later, but suffice to say for now that avoiding sinful sexual stimuli is a big key to avoiding sexual compromise. If you don’t want to be tempted, avoid temptation.

#2: Your Singleness is Likely Temporary

Remember that God is the one who said, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18). Had He created the woman first, He would have surely said, “It is not good for the woman to be alone.” Men and women are created for each other, plain and simple, and sex is the obvious reason there are two sexes. Most men and women eventually marry. Singleness is usually temporary.

If you are single and desire to be married, there is a very good chance that God, who doesn’t think it is good for you to be alone, has someone special in your future. You may have never thought about it, but you can start loving that person right now, even before you meet, by keeping yourself sexually pure. (There are, of course, those who are gifted by God to remain single, something we’ll explore later.)

#3: Your God Was Single

When you think about it, it is amazing that God Himself has experienced the challenge of being single and sexual. If Jesus reached puberty at age 16, He spent half of His earthly life as a single, adult male, so He can certainly empathize with the unmarried.

He did not, by the way, have a special gift of celibacy, as did Paul. Jesus was “tempted in all things as we are,” which is one reason He can “sympathize with our weaknesses” (Heb. 4:15). He possessed sexual desire. As a single, young man, Jesus was tempted to sin sexually. He always exercised self-control, however, demonstrating that God-given sexual desire is not so strong that it can’t be restrained.

By the way, all true Christians have that same victorious Christ living in them. They “can do all things through Christ who strengthens them” (Phil 4:19). Believe it!

#4 God Knows Your World

Although God created sex, He is not the author of sexual temptation, nor did He intend that people would be bombarded with immoral sexual stimuli on a daily basis. Those seductions have increased exponentially in the world since the advent of photography in the 1820s, movies in the 1890s, and the internet in the 1990s—with its advancement to higher speeds up to the present day. Widespread accessibility to Virtual Reality (VR) is on the not-too-distant horizon.

Solomon certainly had his eyes full of women—having 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3)—but he never would have imagined what would one day be available for the majority of the people on the planet to view any time they desired. God knows you are trying to please Him during a unique time in human history when sexual temptation is in the very air we breathe.

The only possible way to entirely avoid the sexual challenges of singleness is to be married prior to puberty. I’m aware of some cultures that practice arranged marriage and where pre-puberty marriages sometimes occur. I was once a guest at such a wedding in rural India. The bride and groom wouldn’t even look at each other during the entire ceremony, and they only reluctantly held hands when told to do so as they were pronounced husband and wife. Directly afterwards, they parted to converse with their friends.

If you don’t live in such a culture, however, you are out of luck! Or, no matter where you live, if you’ve reached puberty and are still single, you’re also out of luck! Take heart, however. God foreknew that you would not be born into a culture that practices arranged marriage, and He also foreknew how long you would be single. He foreknew every struggle you’d face, and you don’t have to wait until marriage for Him to love you. If you are a born-again believer in Jesus, you are His beloved child. He’s for you, not against you. He’s cheering for you. Let that sink in.

#5: God Knows Your Heart

Take comfort knowing that God sees your heart through the sum of all your actions. He knows you want to do what is right, as evidenced by your active resistance to sin and your remorse when you fail. There is a vast difference between diving headfirst into sin because you don’t care what God thinks, and being sorely tempted to sin, resisting it, reluctantly yielding, and then being filled with remorse afterwards. Those are two very different hearts in the eyes of God. For the latter, God has a great love.

Parents are much more merciful towards their children when they are tempted, resist, reluctantly yield, and feel remorse for their acts of disobedience than when their children premeditate their crimes and justify them afterwards, showing no remorse. God is no different. He’s a wonderful Father. Here’s just one of many biblical passages that can help us remember that:

He has not dealt with us according to our sins,

Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,

So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.

As far as the east is from the west,

So far has He removed our transgressions from us.

Just as a father has compassion on his children,

So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.

For He Himself knows our frame;

He is mindful that we are but dust (Psalm 103:10-14).

In keeping with this theme, many struggling single Christians find a degree of solace in some of Paul’s words found in Romans 7:

For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me (Rom. 7:15-20).

Although Paul was writing about his experience as a God-fearing Jew before He was born again (and not his experience as a Christian), his words can certainly have application to struggling single Christians. Many of them feel just like Paul, “doing the very thing they hate.” They should note that, because Paul sincerely wanted to do what was pleasing to God—even though he failed—his culpability was mitigated. How else can the words, “If I am doing the very thing I don’t want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me,” be interpreted?

Of course—in light of so many other balancing scriptures, and as Spirit-indwelt children of God who have been set free from slavery to sin (see Romans 6 and 8)—it would be foolish to conclude that we bear no responsibility for any sin we commit, and that our sins are solely the fault of “sin which dwells in me.” Yet we can acknowledge that God is fair, and He takes everything into account when He judges us. It should comfort you to know that your hatred of sin is an indication of your love for God.

#6: God Has Provided a Remedy for Your Sin

If you do stumble into sexual sin, you are blessed to have an advocate who sits at the right hand of God the Father named Jesus Christ (1 John 2:1). When you confess your sin to God, He forgives you. Period. That is His promise, and He cannot lie (Tit. 1:2):

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).

Note that John didn’t write, “If we confess our sins, God is merciful and gracious to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We generally think of God’s forgiveness as an act of mercy on His part, and it is, of course. John, however, referred to God’s forgiveness as an act of faithfulness and righteousness. When God forgives us, He is doing what is right. The reason it is right is because of Jesus’ death on the cross. If God didn’t forgive us when we confess our sins, it would be an act of unrighteousness, a nullification of Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins. That is not something God is about to do! If you’ve confessed, you are forgiven.

But will God keep forgiving you if you keep repeating the same sin and confessing it?

Yes. Absolutely yes. God expects us to forgive those who repeatedly sin against us. Jesus said:

Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him (Luke 17:3-4).

Take note, forgiving the same person seven times is the daily quota. You can be sure God is not holding Himself to a lesser standard than what He requires of us. If you commit the same sin seven times in one day, and if you confess your sin each time, God will forgive you each time. He’s that gracious. He loves you that much.

I suspect some readers will be alarmed by what I’ve just written, and they might want to caution me about giving Christians a license to sin. “Although what you’ve claimed can be supported by the Bible,” they are thinking, “you are in danger of fostering insincere repentance and an endless repetition of sin among your readers.”

I can understand why some might think that. I’m sure I would doubt the sincerity of a person who sins against me seven times in a day, and who, after each offense, comes to me and says, “I repent.” According to Jesus, however, I’m still obligated to forgive him. Just the fact that the offender made the effort to return once more and say, “I repent,” requires that I give him another chance. Again, God is not going to hold Himself to a lesser standard than what He’s given to us.

There are, to be sure, some leaders in the church world to whom this degree of grace is not only foreign, but heretical, and they make sure their sheep know it. But I submit that, not only do those leaders fail to understand the depth of grace that is available to all Christians who repeatedly sin, they fail to understand the work of grace that occurs in all who truly believe.

I mean this: Those who truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are given new hearts, and they want to please God. There are no true believers who are looking for a license to sin. Those who are looking for a license to sin are unregenerate. They need to be actually born again.

When born-again believers sin, they feel remorseful, and they confess their sin to the Lord either sooner—under conviction—or later—under God’s discipline. Confessing a repeat of a previous sin is particularly shameful to them. But if they believe the promise of 1 John 1:9, such confessions open a new vista of God’s amazing grace. Among true believers, there is no “danger of fostering insincere repentance” by the biblical proclamation of God’s amazing grace. And there is never a possibility that, as you confess a repeated sin, God might say to you, “I’m sorry, but you’ve reached your allotted quota of mercy. From here on, you can’t be forgiven.”

Something Even Better

It is wonderful to experience God’s grace via a new heart that desires to obey and via forgiveness when we fail. But there is even more to God’s grace than that. He also offers grace that transforms. Consider the following words of Paul:

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin (Rom. 6:1).

Something amazing has happened to those who believe in Jesus. They have “died to sin,” “been “baptized into Christ,” “baptized into His death,” buried with Him through baptism,” in order to “walk in the newness of life.” They have become “united with Him in the likeness of His death.” Their “old self was crucified with Him” so that they “would no longer be slaves of sin.”

Clearly, spiritually-reborn people are different than they were. Their spirits,[2] formerly in bondage to a sinful nature, are now free, having been regenerated and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Christ, by the Holy Spirit, has come to live in them. As Paul wrote in another place, “The one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him” (1 Cor. 6:17).

All of this gives Christians the power to live holy, God-pleasing lives.

Obviously, Christians can still sin. God has not made them into holy robots. They all experience the conflict between “the Spirit and the flesh” (Gal. 5:16-23). They don’t, however, have to sin or be enslaved to sinful habits.

Freedom from sin begins by knowing that simple fact, and it is achieved by believing it and acting upon it. The available power is made effectual by faith.

Paul similarly wrote to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20).

Note that Paul described his faith in Jesus, not as a one-time historic act, but as an ongoing reality of his life. We can, and should, have faith in Jesus not just for forgiveness of sins, but for victory over sin as well. So, stop striving in your own strength and start believing. That was Paul’s secret: “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13). He encouraged us to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might” (Eph. 6:10).

For single Christians, this is particularly good news. You can be free of sexual sin by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. So, start smiling! Have faith in God! Start acting on your faith!

[1] An interesting related fact: In Denmark, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, sex offenders were given the choice of prison or surgical castration. Research on 900 castrated sex offenders revealed that the rate of repeat offenses was quite low, about 5 percent. Still, 46 percent of the castrated men indicated that they continued to have intercourse, which indicates that castration doesn’t necessarily completely eradicate sexual desire. Some testosterone is produced by the adrenal glands in the brain.

[2] The New Testament teaches that humans are tri-partite in nature: spirit, soul and body (see 1 Thes. 5:23). The spirit is also described as the “inner man” and the “hidden person of the heart,” contrasted with the body, which is the “outer man” (2 Cor. 4:16; 1 Pet. 3:4). When the body dies, the spirit and soul evacuate. Do not imagine your spirit as some nebulous cloud, but as having a form, one that could be seen in the spiritual realm, just as angels, as spirits, can be seen in the spiritual realm (Heb. 1:13-14).

The post Single and Sexual appeared first on David Servant.

PLEASE NOTE: This e-teaching is not appropriate for children, preadolescents, and many adolescents.

Click…Click…Click…Click. One after another, tiny video images reflect off his eyeglasses in the darkness. It’s late at night.

The bedroom is illuminated only by the glow from his computer screen, which he’s been staring at for three hours. The door is locked, and a blanket has been laid across its bottom so no light can escape the room. He wears headphones, so no one else in the house can hear the exaggerated gasps and moans. He doesn’t want his secret to be discovered.

He occasionally watches the same video twice, but he finds that boredom sets in quickly. He always feels an insatiable pull to click on new videos that might feature women he doesn’t recognize. As he clicks through videos with his left hand, his stroking right hand keeps him right on the verge of orgasm.

At times he’s shocked by what he sees, but it doesn’t take long before he finds himself accustomed to what previously disturbed him. In fact, what previously excited him no longer has the original kick. Like a video-game addict, he’s progressed through several levels, and there is no turning back.

The images that fill his mind each night resurface as soon as he awakes late in the morning, and they follow him throughout the day. It’s difficult for him to think about much else. He has little motivation to do anything. The people with whom he interacts throughout the day have become like ghosts—there, but not really there. He has a hard time looking at anyone in the eye. But no matter. His world of excitement waits for him each night when everyone else has gone to bed.

Porn’s Prevalence

What I have just described is tragically more common than many of us realize. The statistics regarding internet porn use are alarming, to put it mildly. It is estimated that porn makes up 30 percent of the total data transferred across the internet. Pornhub, just one of millions of porn websites on the internet—but not the most popular— reported 33.5 billion visits in 2018. Daily visits now exceed 100 million. Every minute, 64,000 new visitors arrive.[1]

Way back in 2010, it was estimated that 12 percent of all websites were pornography. That means that in 2010, there were more than 24 million porn websites.[2]

A 2014 survey revealed that, among Americans, 43 percent of men and 9 percent of women reported viewing pornography in the previous week.[3] Only 34 percent of American men reported not viewing pornography in at least a year. (For women, the number was 72 percent.)

Among professing Christians, the statistics are also alarming. The same 2014 survey revealed that slightly less than 40 percent of professing Christian men reported watching porn during the previous week. Among Evangelical Protestants who attend church at least three times per month, 29% of men and 4% of women reported watching porn in the previous week.

1 in 5 youth pastors and 1 in 7 senior pastors in the U.S. admit to viewing porn on a regular basis. That’s more than 50,000 church leaders.[4]

What all those statistics don’t reveal is the damage being done to millions of lives, marriages and families by porn indulgence. The scientific evidence shows, for example, that those who regularly view internet porn are actually “rewiring” their brain circuits. That rewiring has spawned a novel physiological phenomenon—young men who suffer with erectile dysfunction. Because of habitual exposure to internet porn, they’ve become unable to perform sexually with an actual woman. They can achieve orgasm only by masturbating to porn. Imagine what that means for their future or current marriages. And that is just the tip of the iceberg of porn’s devastation on human lives. The good news is that there is a means to recovery. Keep reading. Porn, however, is definitely not your friend.

Porn: What is it?

When I was a child, the only way to view porn was to purchase or borrow a copy of Playboy magazine. In the early 1970s, one-fourth of all American college men were doing just that. Yet the nude images in Playboy were mild by comparison to what is considered pornographic today. No one in 1953, when the first issue of Playboy was published with a centerfold featuring Marilyn Monroe, could possibly have foreseen porn’s ominous evolution. Who in 1953 would have imagined that one day hundreds of millions of pornographic videos—including many that are unspeakably vile and perverse—would be just a few clicks away on a device that everyone would carry with them everywhere—their cell phone? (That phenomenon resulted in the demise of the printed version of Playboy in 2020.)

Porn is so pervasive today that it is almost unavoidable. In fact, porn has become so common that what once would have been considered pornographic by a large percentage of people is today not considered pornographic by anyone. Graphic sex scenes in R-rated movies and in popular television series such as Game of Thrones, for example, are pornographic by definition, yet many professing Christians have no qualms viewing them. I recall a pastor in Belgium who told me such scenes “were not pornographic, but rather, ‘erotic.'” So, for him, they were OK to watch.

And even what is considered porn today has been segmented into the standards of “hardcore” and “softcore,” the latter being acceptable in many minds, while the former is questionable or a matter of personal preference.

So what makes something pornographic?

Porn or pornography is dictionary-defined as “printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.”

So, not only might photos and videos be pornographic, but also printed words on a page. Again, note that porn could be an explicit description of sexual activity that is “intended to stimulate erotic feelings.” Romance novels often include pornography, as the scenes described are written by the authors, and consumed by readers, to “stimulate erotic feelings.” Authors describe with words what resembles a scene from a porn film. It’s porn.

When people claim that, on the same basis, the Bible contains pornography, they ignore several key components of porn’s definition. First, porn is an explicit description, that is, one that is “stated clearly and in detail.” Mentioning that someone committed adultery, such as David and Bathsheba, is not the same as an explicit description of the passionate and sensuous moves of an adulterous couple. Second, porn is “intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.” The Bible’s story of David and Bathsheba’s adultery is certainly not intended to stimulate readers’ erotic feelings, but rather to inform them about the character of God, sin, and its consequences.

And although certain passages in the Bible’s famous Song of Solomon (that we will later look at in detail) might “stimulate erotic feelings” within some imaginative reader’s minds, the language and story is not “explicit,” like what you would find in a romance novel, but intentionally vague and poetic:

How beautiful and how delightful you are,
My love, with all your charms!
Your stature is like a palm tree,
And your breasts are like its clusters.
I said, “I will climb the palm tree,
I will take hold of its fruit stalks.”
Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine,
And the fragrance of your breath like apples,
And your mouth like the best wine!” (Song 7:6-9a).

Porn and Lust

The Bible, written long before the invention of the printing press, photography and videography, understandably never mentions the words porn or pornography or condemns indulgence in such. It does, however, warn against meditating on inappropriate sexual imagery. The English word for that is lust. Jesus warned against lust, saying: “Everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28). When one lusts, one “commits adultery in one’s heart”—an obvious reference to imagining a sexual encounter. And it is not just imagining the act of intercourse that constitutes lust, but also what generally always precedes it. To mentally undress someone to whom one is not married is to lust after them.

Of course, lust has always been a sin, even prior to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. He wasn’t making up new regulations on the spot, but rather, was elucidating what was already found in the Mosaic Law. The Greek word translated “lust” in Jesus’ Matthew 5:28 prohibition is epithumeo, and it is elsewhere translated in the New Testament as both “desire” and “covet.” When Paul, for example, quoted in Romans 7:7 the Tenth Commandment, “You shall not covet,” the word he used for “covet” was epithumeo. We know that the Tenth Commandment forbids coveting what belongs to one’s neighbor, including his wife. All this gives us good reason to think the Tenth Commandment was addressing, among other things, the sin of lust. Men who lust after their neighbor’s wives usually don’t do it because their neighbor’s wives have great culinary skills.

Porn, as everyone knows, arouses lust. Through sexual imagery, porn ignites sexual desire and places those who indulge in it into an imaginary, illicit sexual encounter. Thus the most basic reason to avoid all porn: It is designed to arouse lust. Porn is not your friend.

Let us again remind ourselves that God loves us, and that He invented sex. As the creator of sex, He knows that lust (including lust aroused by porn) robs people of the best sex, because the best sex occurs between two people of the opposite sex who are committed to one another in a lifelong covenant of marriage. Lust, however, opens the door for a third person, or multiple persons, into one’s marriage. An affair of the mind is certainly not as wrong as an actual affair, but it is an affair, and thus is a sin against one’s spouse. It is not treating one’s spouse as one wants to be treated, and thus is a violation of the most fundamental ethic that exists, the Golden Rule (see Luke 6:31).

That is the second most basic reason to avoid all porn. It can rob you of the best sex, sex as God intended.

What Lust is Not

Having defined what lust is, it might be helpful to define what it is not.

Sexual desire, in general, is not lust, as it is God-given (see chapter 1).

Observing or admiring the physical attractiveness of a clothed member of the opposite sex is not lust. Scripture describes both Rachel and Esther as being “beautiful of form and face” (Gen. 29:17; Esth. 2:7), two characteristics that could both be admired without transgression (I think it is safe to assume that both dressed very modestly by modern standards).

Scripture tells us that Sarah and Rebekah were both “very beautiful,” so much so that both of their husbands feared being murdered by lustful men who might covet their wives (Gen. 12:14. 24:6). The Bible also mentions the beauty of Abigail, Bathsheba, Tamar, Abishag, Queen Vashti and Job’s daughters (1 Sam. 25:3; 2 Sam. 11:2; 13:1; 1 Kin 1:3; Esth. 1:11; Job 42:15).

Joseph was “handsome in form and appearance” (Gen. 39:6), which made him very desirable to the lustful wife of Potiphar. Scripture says concerning Saul, “There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he” (1 Sam. 9:2). David is described in the Bible as being “ruddy, with beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance” (1 Sam. 16:12). His striking genes seem to have passed on to his son Absalom, of whom it is written, “Now in all Israel was no one as handsome as Absalom, so highly praised; from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no defect in him” (2 Sam. 14:25). He was a hunk.

Beyond all that, notice Jesus didn’t say, “Everyone who notices an attractive woman has already committed adultery in his heart.” No, it is only when one lusts that one is “committing adultery in one’s heart.”

Even though it may not be lustful to admire the attractiveness of a member of the opposite sex, it is certainly insensitive for those who are dating, courting, engaged, or married to allow their attention to be fixed for very long on anyone other than their “significant other.” To say to your husband, “I just met our new neighbor, and is he ever good looking,” or to say to your fiancée, “Our waitress is quite pretty,” is stupid with a capital C. When girlfriends or wives point out the beauty of other women (as they sometimes do), smart men sincerely say, “Well, she’s certainly not as beautiful as you in my eyes.”

Women can certainly be guilty of lust, but it is much more common among men, simply because their sexual desire is visually triggered. No doubt that is why Jesus targeted men in His warning about looking at a woman with lust.

Of course these days, as men regularly encounter scantily-clothed women, in person and through the media, very little effort is often needed to mentally undress them, as they are practically undressed already. To attempt to only “admire their beauty” while avoiding lust would seem like a self-deception. To avoid lust, men must look away, something that requires will power, as the desire to continue looking is strong and built in to their brains. The smartest strategy for men who want to avoid lust is to avoid the stimuli, but even the wisest men in that regard will inevitably be ambushed. And indeed, when good men stumble into lust, the women who caused them to stumble bear guilt. Jesus said, “It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to him through whom they come!” (Luke 17:1).

Adam certainly had it easy in this regard. When you think about it, lust was an impossible sin for him to commit, as there was only one woman in the world (at least initially). I supposed he could have created an imaginary woman in his mind and lusted after her. But this brings me to my final point regarding what lust is not: You cannot lust after your spouse. To mentally imagine any aspect of a sexual relationship with your spouse is never wrong. Rather, it is good, as it may well lead to another wonderous sexual experience that increases your love for each other and for God.

Along those lines, one male reader wrote to me to ask if it was OK to take discreet digital photos or video of his wife for a private collection of “holy porn” that could help him resist the temptation of “unholy porn.” I could not think of any reason it would be a sin and I gave him my affirmation with two qualifications: (1) his (hopefully flattered) wife must unreservedly be willing to cooperate with his plan and, (2) he must make certain there is no way for his private collection to become public (something that has embarrassingly occurred to many people).

The Addictive and Habituating Nature of Porn

One of the most interesting books I read in preparation to write this chapter is titled, Your Brain on Porn: Internet Pornography and Emerging Science of Addiction, by Gary Wilson. It is not written from a Christian or biblical perspective, but it certainly affirms what the Bible has to say about the addictive and habituating nature of sin. Obviously, God allows free moral agents to make sinful choices that often result in painful consequences. Those who persist in sinful choices often find themselves enslaved to negative behaviors that become increasingly harmful to them. According to Paul, this is actually a sign of God’s wrath upon them:

For the wrath of God is revealed [not, “is going to be revealed,” but rather, “is revealed” at the present time] from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse…

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them (Rom. 1:18-20, 24-32).

Part of God’s judgment upon sin is increasing enslavement to it, which may include “giving sinners over to “degrading [sexual] passions.” Many porn users can testify of experiencing that phenomenon. In Your Brain on Porn, Wilson describes in detail the addictive and habituating nature of high-speed internet porn that so often plagues those who venture into it. The identical chemical reward functions of the brain that result in addictions to gambling, junk food, nicotine, and cocaine also work against the porn user. He finds himself craving it. And just like drug addicts who need larger doses to achieve the same highs, internet porn users soon discover the explicit videos that initially sexually stimulated them lose their potency. So they predictably downgrade to increasingly more extreme and perverse genres of porn—which also all eventually fail to sexually stimulate them.

For this reason, porn sites arrange their videos into categories. Once regular users become inevitably bored with “vanilla porn,” they can venture into other genres. Gay and lesbian porn, incest porn, transgender porn, amputee and disabled porn, female domination porn, rape and forced sex porn, gang rape porn, group sex porn, sadomasochism porn (when participants derive sexual pleasure inflicting or receiving pain or humiliation), bukkake porn (when multiple men ejaculate on the head or face of a woman), bestiality porn (sex with animals), gore porn (when rape victims are killed and dismembered), and much more are all waiting for the user who is becoming habituated to his current genre.

There are, no doubt, some readers who are already caught somewhere within porn’s dark, down-sucking vortex. Their sexual tastes have already morphed to some degree. If that is you, keep reading. I’m going to tell you how to escape. But one reason I’ve just listed some of porn’s viler genres is to motivate you to want to escape by helping you foresee what’s inevitably waiting for you if you don’t find a way out.

All of this is a third reason porn is not your friend. It is addictive and habituating, and pulls victims deeper into its bondage.

Deprogramming and Rebooting

Scientific evidence now clearly shows that regular porn users become sexually conditioned by the porn they view. Just as Pavlov’s dogs were conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell, so porn users become conditioned to be sexually aroused only by some form of porn. And the conditioning is not actually psychological, but physiological. Porn users’ brains actually change, as neurochemicals trigger the rewiring of nerve connections.

Here’s an example of what brain scientists refer to as neuroplasticity, defined as “the ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections, especially in response to learning or experience”: Some heterosexual porn users have found that, when heterosexual porn no longer sexually arouses them, and they begin to explore gay and lesbian porn, their brains become conditioned so that only homosexual porn can arouse them sexually. At that point, some become fearful, or persuaded, that their sexual orientation is actually homosexual. (This contradicts the idea that homosexuality is innate from birth or genetically predetermined.) Similarly, homosexual porn users sometimes find that, when homosexual porn no longer sexually arouses them, and they begin to explore heterosexual porn, their brains become conditioned so that only heterosexual porn can arouse them sexually, which can be a fearful thought to homosexuals whose identities are completely bound within a homosexual lifestyle.

Here’s another example of porn’s sexual conditioning due to neuroplasticity: As I wrote earlier in this chapter, high-speed internet porn has spawned an unprecedented and widespread sexual nightmare among young men, what has become known as “porn-induced erectile dysfunction.” They cannot have sex with their wives (or girlfriends) because they cannot be sexually aroused by them. Only the porn to which they masturbate “turns them on.” But that is not all. Regularly “edging” to porn (masturbating for long periods to a point just short of orgasm) hyper-stimulates and exhausts the brain’s reward system. Brain scans of habitual porn users actually reveal less gray matter in certain regions of their brains. They consequently often find themselves also suffering from various mental health problems, such as social anxiety, depression, apathy, lack of concentration and low self-esteem. Porn is self-destructive, another reason it is not your friend.

The good news—and the bad news—is that the Pavlovian conditioning is generally always temporary. The porn user who continues to indulge will ultimately find himself dissatisfied and unable to be aroused, and he will thus explore more extreme versions of porn that do arouse him, whereas the user who abstains long enough from porn will find that his brain slowly restores itself. After a few months of abstinence, his normal sex drive will return. Recovered porn addicts refer to that phenomenon as “rebooting.” At the same time, they generally find that their related mental health problems also are healed. All of this is documented by numerous scientific studies as well as mounds of anecdotal evidence in Your Brain on Porn.

This rebooting has been experienced by hundreds of thousands of men who formerly were addicted to high-speed internet porn. What is interesting is that the majority of them recovered outside any context of Christianity. They simply (1) joined internet forums created for porn users who were suffering with sexual dysfunctions and mental health issues, and (2) they quit porn. Then, with the information, encouragement and guidance of others on those forums, they (3) fought temptations and suffered through withdrawal symptoms. After some months, they found themselves back to normal, sexually “rebooted.”

Again, all of this has occurred outside any context to Christianity, in internet chat forums such as Reddit/NoFap,[5] Reddit/PornFree, NoFap.com, RebootNation.org, YourBrainBalanced.com, as well as several popular Chinese[6] forums, which collectively are serving millions of men (and women). Those men did not have any demons cast out of them, nor did the majority of them rely on the inward power of the Holy Spirit. They simply recognized porn’s harm, made a decision to keep away from it, and took practical steps that helped them stay away. Their testimonies of ultimate victory are not Christian for the most part, as they often celebrate being able to finally have sex with their girlfriends, or women they pick up at a bar.

My primary point is, if hundreds of thousands of non-Christian porn addicts have been able to find freedom from porn and recovery from porn-induced sexual dysfunctions and mental health issues, it would seem reasonable to think that Christians who struggle with porn-related issues, but who love God and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, could also share in sexual victory.

The Magic of Evolution or a Miracle from God?

On a side note, secular science credits the magic of evolution to explain human sexual desire and the brain’s susceptibility to be sexually conditioned. But why does the brain “reboot” itself sexually in the absence of porn? What evolutionary mechanism precipitated a phenomenon that only first surfaced in human experience a decade ago? From an evolutionary standpoint, “rebooting” is just about as easy to explain as is sexual desire, the brain’s susceptibility to be sexually conditioned, or the millions of other unexplainable miracles that regularly occur in human bodies.

If, however, God is the designer of all these things, then the “reboot” phenomenon is evidence of His grace. Prior to reading Your Brain on Porn, I unthinkingly interpreted the “God gave them over” clauses in Romans 1 (which I cited at the start of the chapter) to be warnings of irreversible acts of God’s judgment. Now I see that, just as persisting in evil results in God-determined slavery to sin, so resisting evil results in God-determined freedom from sin’s slavery, and even for those who may resist only some evil, but still indulge in other forms.

You would hope that, after God restored porn-users from porn-induced sexual dysfunction and porn’s related mental health problems through the miracle of “rebooting,” they would marvel at His grace and seek to know Him. You would hope that they might wake up to the fact that all sin, and not just high-speed internet porn, is self-destructive on some level. Sadly, that is not often enough the case.

The Road to Freedom

In the third chapter of Your Brain on Porn, Wilson lists the most common pieces of advice that porn users share on recovery chat forums. If you are addicted to porn, I would strongly suggest that you get your own copy of Wilson’s book, or take advantage of all the helpful free information on his website, YourBrainOnPorn.com. But for the benefit of those who might not, below are some of the tips Wilson lists, to which I’ve added some biblical commentary. Freedom from any sin can be yours, but you have a part to play. You have to resist it. This truth is found very early in Scripture, when God Himself said to Cain: “Sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen. 4:7). Just about all of Wilson’s detailed advice can be summarized with just one word: Resist! He writes:

The first step towards regaining control is to give your brain a rest from all artificial sexual stimulation [italics his] for several months…. Ideally, an extended time-out allows you to:

—   restore the sensitivity of your brain’s reward circuitry so you can again enjoy everyday pleasures,

—   reduce the intensity of the ‘gotta have it!” brain pathways that drive you to use [porn],

—   re-establish your willpower (strengthen the brain’s pre-frontal cortex), and

—   reduce the impact of stress such that it doesn’t set off severe cravings.

Next, you stay consistent because it can take many months, or even a couple of years, for the ‘I want to watch porn right now!’ [brain nerve] pathways to fire less frequently—and then die down….

Through trial and error, rebooters have discovered that surfing Facebook, dating apps, or erotic services sites for images is like an alcoholic switching to lite beer: counterproductive. In short, artificial sexual stimulation includes anything your brain might use in the way it has been using porn: cam2cam erotic encounters, sexting, reading erotica, friend finder apps, fantasizing about porn scenarios…you get the idea.

The goal now is to seek your pleasure from interacting with real people without a screen between you, and awaken your appetite for life and love. At first, your brain may not perceive real people as particularly stimulating. However, as you consistently refuse to activate porn pathways in your brain, its priorities gradually shift.

What Wilson advocates is what the Bible refers to as repentance, which is nothing short of turning 180 degrees from sin. Notice Wilson prescribes complete repentance from any and all forms of artificial sexual stimulation. That is absolutely essential if the porn addict is to find recovery and restoration.

To that same end, Jesus said:

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame, than, having your two feet, to be cast into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. If your eye causes you to stumble, throw it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched (Mark 9:43-48).

None of us believes Jesus was literally recommending cutting off a hand or foot, or removing an eyeball, if for no other reason, because we know that none of those body parts are really the source of our stumbling. The lustful man who cuts out his eyeball simply becomes a one-eyed luster.

Rather, Jesus was elaborating on the biblical principal of resisting sin, which often requires repentance that may appear drastic to some, but not to God, and which is absolutely critical. Because temptation always precedes sin, eliminating temptation reduces sin. Whatever causes you to stumble into sin should be eliminated. If you are a porn user and addict, that includes all artificial sexual stimulation, even if you must take dramatic measures to do so. You are re-wiring your brain, and it requires abstinence from every form of artificial sexual stimulation. Most Christians regularly pray to God, “Lead us not into temptation” (Matt. 6:13). If we ask God to lessen our temptations, should we not also do what we can to lessen them?

More Motivation to Quit

The consequences for not taking necessary drastic measures of repentance can be dire according to Jesus. Three times in the passage we just read (Mark 9:43-48), He cautioned about hell, “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.” Scripture warns that unrepentant sexually immoral people, such as “fornicators” and “adulterers” will not inherit God’s kingdom (see 1 Cor. 6:9-10, Eph. 5:3).

But what about those who don’t actually commit fornication and adultery, but who habitually indulge in porn, which could be considered “mental fornication and adultery”? Are they in danger of hell?

In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:27-28). Then, He immediately prescribed cutting off body parts that cause one to stumble as a means to avoid hell. So there is no doubt that Jesus’ prescriptions for cutting off body parts has application to the lustful, and not just to those who physically commit sexual immorality.

Although Jesus was not saying (as some claim) that thinking about committing adultery with a woman is equally as evil in God’s eyes as physically committing adultery with her, it is clear He was trying to convey that the two are not that far apart. They are certainly not so different that committing one puts one in danger of hell whereas committing the other does not.

All of this is to say that, if Jesus was telling the truth—and He was—those who are “on the narrow way that leads to eternal life” (Matt. 7:13) have plenty of motivation to repent of porn use. Eternity depends on it.[7]

More of Wilson’s Tips for Success

According to the author of Your Brain on Porn, successful rebooters manage their access to porn. They delete all porn from their electronic devices, remove all porn site bookmarks, and clear their browser history. They eliminate anything that triggers them to view porn. They commit to only view their online devices in public environments. They install ad-blockers and porn-blockers on their devices.[8] They guard against the inevitable sexual fantasies that arise from past porn images, replacing them with thoughts that are wholesome. Running porn-like imagery in your mind is little different than actually viewing porn.

Successful rebooters seek support. At least initially, many join an online community of others who are on the same path, and they find accountability partners. NoFap.com and RebootNation.org are two porn-recovery forums that facilitate finding such partners. Some rebooters seek professional therapy from counselors who understand porn addiction, especially if they are dealing with other issues that may have helped open the door to porn, such as childhood trauma or sexual abuse. Successful rebooters keep a journal to record their progress, which is often not linear. On bad days, they can read earlier entries that will be an encouragement by reminding them of where they were.

Successful rebooters also “manage stress, improving self-control and self-care.” They exercise daily, spend time outdoors in nature, break out of their typical isolation to socialize with real people, and fill their time with creative pursuits and hobbies, all of which are healthy for their brains and keep them occupied and away from their old life of porn. They reduce or eradicate all meaningless, empty, time-wasting activities, especially those associated with a computer screen.

Successful rebooters maintain a positive attitude, and they seek helpful inspiration and education. They are, Wilson says, gentle on themselves:

Sex is a fundamental drive, and giving up the intense stimulation of regular porn use is a big shift for your brain. Ease your way through the transition, forgive yourself if you slip (but try to avoid bingeing), and keep going.

The more rebooters learn about what is going on in their brains, the better they are able to hang in there and resist cravings during their reboot. Wilson’s website, YourBrainOnPorn.com, is clearing house for up-to-date, relevant science on porn addiction and recovery. One rebooter expressed on an internet forum how much it helped him to understand the biology behind his problem, and I thought his comment was very relevant for struggling Christians:

I no longer see my addiction as the influence of demons or the natural expression of my wicked sinful heart, but as a very human, very natural (albeit misplaced) desire for sexual intimacy. It was a bad habit, reinforced by neurochemicals, but nothing mysterious or ethereal. I realized that I already had the power to control my actions. And so I did. I realized that the life I wanted to lead was incompatible with porn use, so I made that decision. “Simply” doesn’t mean easily, of course.

Rebooters say that the first two or three weeks of porn abstinence are usually the most challenging. As with any neurochemical-based addiction, rebooters often suffer withdrawal symptoms. They include mood swings, irritability, a desire to isolate, anxiety and panic, brain fog, sweat sessions, nausea, headaches, hot flashes, jitters and shakes, insomnia, depression, and of course, severe cravings for porn. Withdrawal symptoms can linger for months, but slowly, life returns.

Some rebooters, particularly those who are suffering from porn-induced erectile dysfunction, experience weeks of a complete loss of libido, referred to by them as “flat-lining.” That can be terrifying for some, but if they will just give their brains time, eventually, the desire for sex returns, usually in full force.

Once rebooted, it is vital rebooters understand that it is not safe for them to ever return to any porn indulgence. Those who do open the door to a complete relapse.

Two Final Reasons Why Porn is Not Your Friend

I have not yet mentioned how degrading porn is to all women (and to men as well) in general and to those who expose their bodies in particular. Surely, most women and men would prefer to be thought of by others as more than just sexual objects. As humans, we are spirit, soul and body, and created in God’s image (1 Thes. 5:23; Jas. 3:9). Porn actors, however, reduce themselves to shells of skin who prostitute themselves to the entire world.

For money, they engage in shameful and often perverse sexual immorality, while others capture their lewd acts on film for profit—all of them hoping to capture the widest audience. They are the most deplorable prostitutes and pimps in human history. Together, they contribute to the corruption of children and youth and the destruction of marriages. They create a demand for human trafficking and promote violence towards women. They encourage rape, incest, and every kind of sexual perversion under the sun. They pervert one of God’s wonderful gifts and help destroy sex as He intended. How much lower can people descend morally?

Porn users need to admit that they are joining the ranks of such despicable people.[9] When they view porn, they participate in and support the porn industry and all the evil it spawns.

Time to Quit

In summary, porn is not your friend because it (1) arouses lust, (2) robs you of the best sex, (3) is addictive and habituating, and pulls its victims deeper into sexually-perverse bondage, (4) is self-destructive, and opens the door to a host of mental health problems, (5) can drag you right into hell, (6) sexually objectifies and degrades women (and men), and (6) makes you a partner with the world’s most deplorable people and a supporter of all the evil the porn industry spawns.

Porn is God’s enemy, so it cannot be your friend. If you are caught in porn’s web of wickedness, there is an escape. But repentance is where your escape starts. Scripture admonishes: “But immorality or any impurity…must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints” (Eph.5:3). “Flee immorality” (1 Cor. 6:18). Don’t wait another second! — David

[1] All the stats from this paragraph are found at https://enough.org/stats_porn_industry.

[2] https://gizmodo.com/finally-some-actual-stats-on-internet-porn-5552899

[3] From https://relationshipsinamerica.com/relationships-and-sex/how-much-pornography-are-americans-consuming. Interestingly, the same survey showed that “60-year-old men are still only slightly less likely to have viewed pornography within the past week than men in their 20s and 30s. Among women, however, there is a more linear downward trend in pornography use with age. While 19 percent of women under age 30 report viewing pornography in the week prior to the survey, only three percent of women in their 50s report doing so, meaning that—unlike men, the youngest women are over six times as likely to have viewed pornography recently as the oldest women.” Apparently, men and women view porn for different reasons. Women tend to view porn for sexual education, thus the reason that younger women view much more porn than older women, whereas men of all ages view porn for sexual pleasure.

[4] https://www.covenanteyes.com/pornstats/

[5] “Fap” is a popular slang word for masturbate.

[6] China’s “one-child policy,” which lasted for 36 years, resulted in skewed ratio of males to females, as many married Chinese couples preferred a solitary son over a solitary daughter and took measures to achieve that end. Today, China is reaping the fruit of its folly, and there are as many as 30 million more Chinese men than women. Tens of millions of eligible men will not be able to find eligible brides. No wonder internet porn addiction has become a massive social problem.

[7] Those who subscribe to an unbiblical gospel that effectively grants a license to sin to those who have allegedly “believed in Jesus” should read the New Testament more honestly. Faith without works is dead, useless, and unsaving; see James 2:14-26.

[8] Here are three free porn-blockers Wilson suggests: qustodio.com, esafely.com/home.php, and dnsfilter.com. And here is a free ad blocker: adblockplus.com.

[9] Of course, God can redeem anyone who is willing to repent and follow Jesus.

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